I'm just wondering what everyone used at some point for sim/demo trades? I've been using Thinkorswim. Wish I could change the start amount of money I have, but I guess I can simply act like I have a certain amount.
Been years since I used ToS but their was a way to change the dollar amount in paper trading. I did it quite a few times. I will say that as far as what you can get on a free demo account it's pretty high up there compared to any other option I've heard of.
I'll look at it again. Couldn't actually change the amount a few months back or didn't understand how to. It seems pretty legit. Makes it feel like it is real compared to a few others I have messed with.
Pretty hard to beat IB's paper trader. I still use it to test new ideas. The fills closely resemble real-time trades
I used IB paper trading previously. However I found when doing LMT buys I was always being filled at the LMT on the demo account, no matter how low or high I chose it. Sometimes my very high sell LMT was being hit randomly, with actual data not matching. But I think once you have an actual live account the demo account starts to trade like a real live account though, still with paper money of course. But I haven't really verified.
%% IB is a good broker; thier charts are workable even if volume is or is not accurate. I prefer paper trading to sim trading-paper is more real-NOT that paper trading shows slippage or real profits .IT does NOT; but still useful, keep you out of trash trades. Paper trades=Learn levels better.................................................................................. Believe it or not i much prefer paper[ printed] charts much more than computercharts, Packer43-7Trender.Good question.
It's near impossible to accurately test a strategy in a simulated environments. Platform demos do not use the actual exchange/product-specifc trade matching algorithms, so the timing of your fills will never be extremely accurate.
It's very easy to establish a demo account for the new TT platform from Trading Technologies. You may use this link to do so: https://www.tradingtechnologies.com/try-tt/
The TT demo is great, because your orders will actually eat up the opposing orders in the bid/ask (ex: I buy 100 ZQ at the market when the ask size is 500, and the ask size will actually drop to 400). However, TT demo does not give you account value... just P/L on your current positions.