| GROUND LEVEL INSIGHTS
The Best Way To Trade When You’re Getting Started
Hi, Stephen Ground here, your brand new ProsperityPub Editor-in-Chief.
If you missed my letter explaining how we’re re-launching ProsperityPub with a renewed focus on making trading accessible and actionable for everyone, you can read it here.
Today, I want to talk about how you can gain confidence in trading.
After all, risking actual money on real trades can be nerve-wracking under even the best conditions.
But you can’t learn to ride a bike just by reading a book — you actually have to get out there and “do it.”
That’s where paper trading comes in.
Paper trading is a way to try your hand at trading the markets without risking real cash.
The name comes from a time before computers when new traders would track their trades on paper instead of risking real cash in the markets.
These days, thankfully, computers take the hard work out of it, allowing us to try our hand at trading without having to risk any actual cash.
It’s the best of both worlds if you think about it, because you get all the experience of trading without having to worry about losing your hard-earned money.
You get to make all the mistakes without any danger whatsoever.
And believe me, there will be mistakes — especially when you’re getting started.
Trading is about more than just understanding if a stock is going up or down.
It's also about understanding your strategy inside and out. Are you a swing trader, holding positions for a few days to weeks, or a day trader, making quick trades within the same day?
As we explore trading together, we’ll come to learn that each strategy has its own set of rules and best practices.
Then there’s knowing which buttons to push to achieve the result you want.
For example, knowing how to set a stop-loss order to limit your potential losses… Or how to set a limit order to ensure you get the price you want when buying or selling a stock.
Getting to know your trading platform is absolutely essential. Paper trading lets you gain all that knowledge without the pain of incurring huge losses.
But don’t think that paper trading is just for beginners. Even experts use paper trading. Sometimes it’s just to test a new trading strategy or try a wild, aggressive trade without risking losses.
Other times it might be because they’re switching platforms.
Whatever the reason is, there’s nothing to be ashamed of with paper trading!
It’s simply a tool that you can use to gain knowledge and experience.
Nearly all major trading platforms have some form of paper trading.
There are way too many trading platforms for me research and mention here by name, but just to give you an idea each of these has some form of it:
| | • | | Schwab’s ThinkOrSwim | | | • | | Interactive Brokers | | | • | | Robinhood | | | • | | TradingView | | | • | | TradeStation | | | • | | WeBull |
As we explore trading the markets together, you’re going to want to test out trade ideas and get comfortable looking at charts, placing trades and using other features of your trading platform.
If you don’t already have one, I recommend you test out a few platforms that will let you paper trade so you can try different ideas without incurring any real risk.
There are many free platforms and others that only require you to fund an account with a minimum deposit, usually $100 or less.
Get familiar with one or more until you find one that you’re comfortable with.
Looking forward to seeing you thrive,
— Stephen Ground
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