Have you ever seen a child get on a bicycle and start riding straight off...
without ever having been on a bicycle before? How about a person picking up a bow for the first time and sends the arrow right to the bull's eye? Doesn't happen, does it? Well, stock trading is the same way.
You have to practice the techniques and make sure that you are ready before you leap in.
Paper trading is the safest and cheapest way to try out trading principles and strategies.
There are dozens of free online programs you can use...
but personally, I like to just set up a spreadsheet.
Basically, you are going to "pretend" that you purchased some stock.
Use whatever method or strategy that you'd like to, keeping track of the symbol, the purchase price, the sales price and the commissions.
As you get a few "trades" completed using your chosen strategy, you'll be able to see the big picture and tell if you have a winner or a loser.
If you'd like to set up a spreadsheet to keep track of your trading (which I totally recommend, by the way), I prefer MS Excel, but there are many other programs.
In fact, Google offers a spreadsheet application through Gmail.
It's called Google Docs, and you can have everything kept nice and neat online! Again, this is a very simple and cheap way to find out if a particular strategy is worth real world consideration.
If it doesn't work, don't fret.
You've lost nothing!