DEMO Trading 'Uncovered"...the 'fleecing' of a 'wanna be' trader? This may help someone... Does trading with a demo account really help or really hurt? ***Forex, Stocks, Futures, Options...whatever*** 1-some say must double or triple your account on a demo before trading with real $$$ 2-some say only trading with real $$ will help you learn and demo trading is useless 3-some say demo trading gives you false illusions of how good you are 4-some say, unless you can bring a demo from say $1,000.00 to $5,000.00 etc. you have no business trading with real $$$ 5-and on and on and on...the debate rages on... what do you think...does demo trading 'help' or 'hurt' the 'wanna be' trader...
Depends on a person's personality I suppose. I never could legitimately keep a demo account going for more than a week because I tend to get bored and double and triple up on a position. I think what's best for people like me who have ADD is to trade very small if you want to learn to trade. Forex would be perfect for this scenario because you can trade like a dime per tick and commissions wouldn't be a factor.
IMO Itâs a tool, and like any other tool has it uses and limitations For getting the mechanics of entering and exiting, and/or familiarizing oneâs self with the platform â yes For watching the charts and learning set ups â yes Once money is introduced (trading live) â A whole new dimension (set of issues/ challenges) arise that demo trading will never address Regards RN
I agree that it depends on your personality. Initially I opened a demo account years ago and traded it and made loads and loads of pretend money. This was because I wasn't treating it at all realistically. I had a demo account of much much more money than I would ever actually have. I traded without any sort of stops because "it always comes back in the end" etc etc. I then opened a live account and got raped. I then got serious and I began taking demo trading very seriously due to the financial pain i had previously suffered - so much so I would even get kind of nervous just putting on a demo trade. Id get depressed at losing days on my demo account etc. After a while i became quite consistent and made the transition relatively easily. However, from my experience, not everyone can seperate their emotions and take demo trading seriously, and so, to some people it will only be useful for working out how the particular software works etc. However, if you take it very seriously and factor in commissions/slippage etc, then it is a very poweful tool and there's no reason you can't make consistent money live after a successful demo period if you are wired correctly, imo.
Yes, for learning how to use a platform or TEST a strategy or an edge... Demos are excellant tools... BUT... To get the most important ingredients - EMOTIONS... Fear and Greed... into the equation... you need to have someone stand blindly behind you with a bat and lots of dollar bills... sometimes he smashes you with the bat and sometimes he throws dollar bills... now there's a real demo... HAVE STOP <img src="http://www.enflow.com/p.gif"> WILL TRADE
(please read this entire post, not just the first paragraph.) I want to take this opportunity to mention what was a problem, a severe problem, with the TOS paper trading platform: In the DOM display, Buys were filled on the bid and Sells were filled on the Ask!!! I wrote to them 2 or three times about this but never received a response. Their silence indicated to me that I was probably correct. Let me point out to any neophytes here that it is extremely easy to scalp a lot of money if you can buy on the bid and sell on the ask consistently. In a simulator platform this would have the effect of giving neophytes too much confidence in their abilities. If you were a brokerage and you wanted to get customers, and you were a little unethical, you would set your demo platform up to buy on the bid, sell on the ask. I am not accusing TOS of this, as their programmers may have made an innocent error, but it does raise a question about the legitimacy of fills on any demo platforms. Now, there may be a happy ending. I have not checked it out for sure, but it seems the last time I looked at the TOS paper platform it was correctly buying on the ask and selling on the bid. They may have taken note of my emails after all! It would really be nice to see demo platforms use sophisticated algorithms for fills that would as closely as possible mimic the fills you could expect to get in live trading. On all demo platforms, no matter how good they are in other respects, the fills are always suspect. P.S: I'd really appreciate it if someone who has access to the TOS paper platform would check it out and give a second opinion Re fills. PPS: Just now checked it again. Still seems to be filling buys on the Bid in the DOM. Checked against time and sales. Was filled well before last reached the ask price. Was filled when last was on the bid. This is not good!