How practicing with fake money saved me from losing another $500

After my last post about losing $500 in 2 weeks, a bunch of you DMed asking what I did to actually fix my trading. Here’s the honest answer: I stopped trading real SOL.

Sounds counterintuitive, right? But hear me out.

The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know the theory of good entries and exits. I could explain bonding curves and position sizing all day. The problem was executing under pressure. When you’ve got 0.3 SOL on the line and a token is dumping 15% in 3 minutes, all that knowledge goes out the window.

So I spent 2 weeks just practicing timing with zero risk. Just tracking when I’d enter, when I’d exit, what my hypothetical P&L would be. No real money, no emotional attachment, just repetitions until my win rate was actually consistent.

What changed:

• I stopped chasing 5-10% bonding entries. Now I wait for 40-60% + volume confirmation
• I set exits before entering (2x or 70% bonding, whichever hits first)
• I capped position sizes at 10% max, even when I felt “confident”

The biggest difference? My win rate went from maybe 30% to consistently above 60%. And when I finally went back to real trades, the emotional discipline was already built in.

For anyone who’s blown their stack early on: take a break from real money. Practice your timing and strategy until it’s muscle memory. You can use something like tradingsimbot.com (it’s free) or just track trades in a spreadsheet. The point is removing emotion from the equation while you’re still learning.

Saved me from throwing away another $500 learning the same lessons twice. Boring? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely.