"No beginning trader has any business playing with a simulator. If he is so undercaptalized that he can't afford to test his ideas with sample sizes, then he has no business being in the game in the first place." That's the biggest load of crap I've read in a long time. Everyone has to start somewhere, and it's usually where they must. I'm glad I didn't listen to someone like you 20 years ago when I got started with $450, and there were plenty just like you even back then. Lots of people think they know everything when they really only speak for themselves. I've done well with stocks, and now I'm moving in to Forex. I am *not* trading real money in Forex until I make money papertrading. Any real money I traded in Forex right now would essentially be flushed down the toilet, *not* what I would advise others to do.
I think this thread has gone cancerous! The original post (does anyone remember) was about new alternatives available for new traders - ie. advanced simulators, which compliment paper trading. To which the answer is, yes, new traders are lucky in that they have more ways to learn. It soon became apparent that there are two broad camps: 1) Learn to trade without money - paper/ sim 2) Learn to trade with very small money - real Clearly these are not going to agree - but surely the merits of both can be seen? I fall squarely into camp 2, but I can also see some use in trying out a new strategy or indicator, without trading real money. Can people in camp 1 not see any benefits with camp 2 - for example, instead of paying for a simulator, use that small cash to learn by trading small? I'm amazed at some of the comments on this board which seem to be personal attacks - and also that some posters seem to think there can be only one answer, and sure enough its their's. I'm losing faith in the value of this site!
sonofagun: I just started playing with BT. Do you know if we could upload any historical data tick or 1min for a particular day in the past let's say 9/2/2003 or 8/5/2003 or whatever and run in recorded mode? If so, do you know how to go about doing it? thanks
I suppose paper trading a mechanical system and giving good slippage may be usefull. I can tell you this from a recent experince. I have daytraded petty much full time since 1996. I paper traded about 9 mos ago for one day while waiting for my account to get setup at assent. That day I made something like 3600 bucks in an hour. It was the easiest thing I could possibly imagine. I felt like it was 1999 again. It was so far from real. In real trading you get all of your losing trades and you get some or parts of many of your winners. The really good trades are only there a short time and all the losers will give you all the time you need to press the button. They will even give you that second chance.
ButtonTrader will only replay sessions you recorded using ButtonTrader, because of the format used and all the other data stored in a recorded session, e.g. market depth, which is usually missing from historical tick data. There are some recorded sessions on the website of ButtonTrader. If you want to replay a special day (or have a session recorded) ask in the Yahoo Group or ask the support: maybe someone has it or can record it for you. But be very specific as to what you want to see: these files can grow very large. Regards Bernd Kuerbs
I think I can throw in a few ideas about simulated trading and simulation on historical data. First, let's talk about simulated trading. In the old days simulated trading is about sitting in front of the computer and paper trade the setups in real-time. Now, you can use NeoTicker to replay historical data anytime you want, and getting the complete feel of real-time trading. Yes, you can also practice with the built-in trade simulator which saves you time on doing the final analysis of your results since the trade simulator can do that for you. Is that useful for learning to trade? The answer is yes, if you are trueful to yourself and actually pay attention to the trading practice. It is like learning a foreign language. For a beginner of a new language, nothing beats drillings on commonly used dialogs. Or, it is like learning to fly a fighter jet using a simulator. Better fix all the most common mistakes before you crash and burn a real one Can that replace real-time experience? No, but definitely shorten the learning time required for the basic techniques and improve/stablize the quality of core skill sets needed for trading. Now, we can talk about the value of replaying historical data and reviewing such for an experienced trader. Since an experienced trader already have the skill set. What historical data replay can offer is totally difference from such point of view. The key here is the ability to research and discover better setups in greatly shorten time span. It used to be watching the charts in real-time and you notice an interesting setup. Then you flip through the old charts to see if it is of any value to include into your trading. Since such recognition has the problem of "seeing" the future data on the same charts, you will likely skip over the bad ones and see more of the good ones. That bias will be corrected once you start tracking the setup in real-time. Now, you can force yourself into the situation to actually mark the setups through simulation, that gives you a way better perspective of the quality of your new findings. You can even analysis the setups afterwards easily to see if you can apply filters to improve the setups. All done at the fraction of time comparing to observe in real-time only.