Said to Doc "while I totally agree with Arindam you need to “go forth” on your own perspective, please think carefully or paper trade.
Lakedog,
There is a third possibility, namely, bypassing paper-trading --which mostly just teaches bad habits-- and cutting bet sizes way, way down to a single or even fractional shares and keeping an honest, accurate trading journal.
As for back-testing, there are websites where it can be done, just as it can be done in a spreadsheet. But the tool I’d recommend is StockAnalyze, which is both a back-tester and scanner. There’s going to be a learning curve. But if a person has done any programming at all, they won’t have a problem writing and testing trading rules.