everyone has their own learning speed, the thing is how long do you practice. i still have a demo account for all my testings.
I stayed on Hotforex demo for 1 year because my friend told with without solid backtested strategy with wise money management there is nothing to do in trading. And yes it seemed that backtesting was the biggest achievement since I don't go with trials and errors rather employ statistical approach.
For beginners it is favorable to use it because not knowing much of the trading they can learn the theory on their own, in turn manage a demo account as if it were a real one, this way you can become aware of what the market is like when you use a real account but you should never be overconfident because in a demo account almost everything you try ends up coming out but in a real account things are not so easy and there are great risks.
A demo account is a starting point for any new trader. That is why all the practice is done or at least I thought. These days, new traders just jump in to a live account the moment they know where the open and close buttons are. You are better off with a demo account for the first three months at least.
There are a few of them. It's been a while I used Forexchief demo account, but I still remember that it does not expire and you can login at anytime.
Now every broker is having limited demo account availability which means, the life of demo account is limited, you can access them for few months then they will expire.
In this way the broker makes trader to fund his account and start trading with real money. Of course, it would be better to have enough time to practice - each trader should decide himself when it is suitable for him to start trading with real account. At the same time, since it is quite easy to open demo account and since it creates no obligations for the trader, it is possible to open multiple demo accounts one by one to be able to get strong tradin skills before starting trading with real money. Some of the traders also use demo accounts to test their strategies even if they already have real accounts just because it is better to check the performance of new stategy using demo accont rather than to risk with real money. At the same time, this is not the most efficient way of testing and its results sometimes are not accurate enough. If you are going to test the same strategy with different parameters on demo, you wouldn`t be able to get detailed results just because the data and the number of trades would be different for each time. The results of demo testing could be also influenced by trader`s psychology. That is why to my mind it is better to use automated backtesting with the help of scripts (for those, who have deep knowledge in coding) or with special software like Forex Tester which would be suitable even for novice traders. At the same time, demo testing is important too, because trader has to check his own performance with the new strategy. It should be comfortable for him to trade using it otherwise he would more likely to violate its rules. So the optimal strategy development process includes both automated backtesting and manual demo testing. That is why demo account is still an important tool for traders
Awe, I really admire your post that you have shared. Demo account is really an important concept that we must try before we start live trading of real money.