Has anyone executed the same trade (or the same type of trades/strategies) using both their paper and real accounts with IB? How close to the real market were your paper trading fills (eg., did the paper trader give you a good estimate of your slippage, etc.)? Were you able to paper trade futures, options, and stocks? Any major issues with the paper trader? Generally speaking I like IB, but I have not tried the paper trader yet. I would like to test some things using their paper trader but I also want to get a sense for how far off my execution will be when moving from the paper trader to a real account. Your $0.02 USD would be much appreciated!
I've found it really useful, though there's a couple of caveats.. firstly I only seem to be able to get a maximum of 30 lines of data, a shame since my strategy involves testing a wider set of stocks. Secondly I've been having trouble getting it reset. Prob some hiccups to iron out I guess. Overall though it seems pretty good, and seems to give pretty reprasentative results. (though no slippage I don't think)
a lot of the times you don't seem to get filled on idealpro orders in the papertrader, never had any complaints with the life one ...
The fill simulator for limit orders for the paper trader account assumes you will always pay the spread. In theory this should be worst case and your results trading real money should be better.
For me real trading was slightly better. Partly due to unbundled commisions, which paper trading does not simulate. I was only trading a few hundred shares, using relative orders.
Thanks for the replies! No slippage? What about partial fills? Part of what I would like to test involves market orders so slippage and partial fills are kind of important (and, most of the time, an unfortunate reality). Anyone tested market orders on the PaperTrader?
no patial fills it seems..... buys seem to fill at the ask and sells at the bid. Commision are added to the cost basis.
After testing this out for a few days, I have noticed that market orders take a VERY long time to execute on the Paper Trader. I tried sending market orders for the Nasdaq futures on Globex and execution time averaged about 10 to 15 seconds! Markets orders should be executed immediately. Anyone else seen this type of delay with market orders?
Partial fills with limit orders absolutely. I've been using paper trader specifically to sort out partial fills with auto trading. Great.