Thank you for an honest response. Posts like this is what ET shines at. Probably, because of you I just saved a couple hundred dollars. Thank you!
Don't blame Ecry or any other sim from any other broker for your view of a real market. Your not trading against the market you are sim trading against what a programmer thinks is the market. After 20 years of trading I believe Sim's should be banned imo because it teaches bad habits that many traders are never able to break to become profitable traders. New traders should trade one lot futures or 10-100 share lots equities from the get go otherwise you will never ever ever learn to control the emotions that every trade brings. The balls that grow large from using simulators will quickly crawl up inside and hide after the first full day of trading real dollars. Humility is the markets greats gift it will give you. And that can be a painful gift to receive. Those who accept it's teaching will be the only ones that stand a chance of surviving to trade another day. Good luck and good trading. Bsulli
AustinP; Thank you for your time and your patience in explaining why my system would not work in real life. I guess if it was that easy, everybody and their mother would be doing it with 500 lots in and out.
I am not a programmer but it seems to me that it would be possible to make sims more in tune with real life trading. Yet for some reason it is not done.
because its to their benefit that more people think its easy to make money on the markets. thats why they dont make their market estimates conservative. I am not sure but id imagine private sims at large firms are harder to make money on than live.
You (or your system/platform) will not be nimble enough to do the 1/4 point strategy. Good luck in your studies.
saxon, i tried to do something like this a couple of years ago with tradestation (with an automated system). Finally it didn't work as the fills are no so "easy" like in the simulated mode. Anyway, if you're going to jump into the market to try it i suggest that you filter the day you're going to take some strategy like this (looking for 0.25 or 0.50). I mean, some sort of volatility filter, the system will be working on days like we had a few days ago (low volatility enviroment with 4 to 5 points spread on the day). If you have a day with 15 to 25 points spread you'll be killed or just the Risk/reward would not work, of course it wouldn't be easy to find out that before it happens (i mean the kind of day). Anyway with such system you should be aware the R/R ratio is against you. Keeping that in mind, go ahead and good luck!
Some simulators are better them others. Try an X-Trader demo (Velocity should be able to help) or Strategy Runner, or Button Trader (you can play with some free replay files) and see if you can get away with the shenanigans you got away with on the OEC demo. I doubt it.
It is called seduction sax22. If I were you I would move out to the first real fade trades at 4-8 point swings and leave the one point nonsense alone. You might find it easier to talk points and handles ( 1 handle =4 pts) rather than 1/4 pts. Even when you have a winning fade programme you are still faced with being filled in the FIFO system