Well hedging for me would be an alternative trading strategy to using stop loss. It is a good risk management strategy and if you are not using stop loss or don't like to see change in your original balance when a trade is in loss then i would say hedging is a good strategy. But one has to be very disciplined with hedging and must know when to take the hedge on and when to take the hedge off.

Hedging is a good strategy of you apply it professionally, but too bad many traders only use it under emotional pressures of trying to cover their losses in the current trades, i think it works best in a ranging market and poor in a trending market.

One strategy, it will take time to develop but its worth it.

Given a constant account balance, increasing lot size is the same as increasing leverage. For example, if you have $1000 in your account and you move from micro lots (1000 units) to mini lots (10,000 units) you've increased your leverage use 10-fold. Since you are getting ready for demo trading, I think the best way for you is to try what ever will come on your mind and the result will show you what is better.

Most of the decent traders cannot manage to have same or similar profits every month, that is why it's more important to take a look on the annual return and if you can manage to have 15-20% you are doing great job.