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Simulated trading is useful if you are new to trading and are using discretionary trading techniques. If you are relying entirely on indicators that have been back tested and forward tested successfully then maybe you dive right in.
I used to paper trade a lot, but did find that I was fairly careless in my approach. I derive a lot more value from "grading my homework" and revisiting my completed trades after they are complete.
First I break up what my strategy was going into a trade and separate the population. If I'm picking up something off the 52 week lows, I'm generally giving it more time then something that dropped a lot on a daily from barely correlated competitor report that was unfavorable. (i.e. FB makes headlines and Amazon falls because of it.)
Then I grade them as to if I made target money, made money or lost money. Finally I capture the number of days held. Normally I can get a trade to make money, but when I start seeing too many "made money" only trades, I know that I'm getting too quick with a trigger finger...or there's so much selection in a trading style that realization takes longer as there's fewer people looking at things the same way.
Still paper trading is good as well. If you set something up and let it run passively for awhile you may start to glance and see what type of portfolio is killing it vs dying...and be more on top of that if you see similar conditions later.
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