Sounds like you've got the discipline to make a go of it. An InteractiveBrokers account might give you some options - they call their sim Paper Trader, and they've got all the products to trade. Trading around job hours is tough (I've only managed it a little); I used to wait hours for a forex setup and by then it would be 4 in the morning. Futures may provide more setups in a given time period than forex; for unusual trading hours you could try 1 contract of the ESTX50 from Germany (it moves "smoother" than the DAX). But money management to insure survival is key (without setting stops so close as to guarantee whipsaws).
No you usually have to register & just put your info in kind of like you were pretending you were gunna open an account. Then play with the demo data will probaly be delayed so attempt to trade like it was real as frank said have a plan so u can play realisticaly.
i used to paper trade (kind of) with tradefreedom's demo account and it sucked... when you would enter a stop loss it would only work some of the time ( i think it got triggered by live price instead of simulator price and this does not work when data is delayed) and there was never any short inventory
I personally think paper trading is for the birds! I started out paper trading and everything was peachy. I had ice running through my veins and was killing it! Then I started trading with real money and realized that bad fills can change your profitability in an instant. Worse than bad fills was the emotions that were absent in the paper trades came roaring to life when it was my money on the line. A couple of books I have read suggest that the first bunch of money you put in the market should be looked at as your learning fund. So if you have 4k - don't worry about losing it. Use that 4k to learn all you can about the market, about execution, about cycles, breakouts, support and resistance. Most importantly use this learning time to figure out your trading style and edge. Think of it as the tuition you have to pay in order to learn how to be a good trader. I went to a lawyers once to see about getting 120k that a business had took from me. The lawyer looked over my docs and told me - you got a good case, but its not worth it to pursue over 120k. Chalk it up as a learning experience and come back and see me when you have 1.2 million. So, use that 4k for learning. Make detailed observations and keep a journal detailing every trade. It might take some time, but you'll figure out how to get more money. Good luck!
These were my thoughts exactly. But as time progressed I thought to myself that it must be foolish to trade a live account first and that my wish to stay trading live must be the mindset of a gambler. Altho I am having second thoughts for several reasons: 1) your post 2)Im not loosing huge amounts of money (mabie 100$ a month) and I am learning alot 3) finding a good paper trading account is difficult 4) I think I am close to getting my edge (but I always have tho). It seems that I can see all the good setups but I only take the bad ones. Last night I was watching the aud trade against the usd and i saw a setup that I almost took but decided not to because of the volatility. It turned out that I could have placed an unreasonably tight stop and got 150 pips (which would put my account all the way back at where it started)
You're on the right way: currently, your commissions are way too high, and you should probably trade less or with a broker, that really doesn't have minimum lots. I think IB offers both. Furthermore, you should study Andrew's Pitchfork and FIbonacci Retracements. There's no way around, if you want to make money in the forex. Right now, stop trading altogether (or better yet, trade very tiny size) and print yourself this article out, and read it again and again for the next couple of weeks: http://www.gaincapital.com/files/traders-04-12-01.pdf
IB has an awesome sim account. It updates in real time. It's almost like the real thing. But you have to realize that trading a sim account with fake money is not like trading even with small positions. There's no emotion involved. Sim accounts do have some use, but don't overestimate their value. Just a word about trading. I just want to warn you that trading stocks and especially daytrading is very risky. Most traders fail. Trading takes years and years of experience and smarts. If you could succeed, GREAT. I wish you all the success in the world. But I wish I had someone there to tell me how hard it was to trade. Trading looks easy, but is very hard. It gets easier with years of experience. It's like a never ending puzzle.