There's no fear in simulated trading. If you lose 10 grand, no biggie. You can risk more, make more, and tolerate larger draw downs When hard earned money is at stake, there are real consequences and therefore, decisions are different. Simulated trading is good for learning but eventually, you have to pick up the scalpel and cut for real.
I have an optionsxpress virtual accout and a real...also a Futures trading account with another broker...In my opinion...virtual trading does not help at all!!!!!!...it is just good at giving you a false impression of real trading...here is an example: On 9/29 I bought about $1,000 worth of QQQQ puts in my "virtual account"...I actuall forgot about it...I checked my virtual account yesterday and the position grew to $5,000 plus!!!!...WOW...YEA!!!...BUT...it was all fake...NOW, would I have forgot about a real trade on the line and let it run...NO!!!!...I most likely would have traded out that day or the next with a much smaller profit...so...they are not equal...real $$$$ changes EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING!!!...again...just my thoughts...
It depends what you want to learn. Sure, it lacks the 'feel' of real money and the psychological barrier that prevents traders from making good decisions with real money. But, if this broker is new to a customer, it's a good way to learn to use the trading platform, preventing that customer from confusing buy vs sell orders. It also allows the newbie to learn how to enter spread or combo orders, to learn how to use any risk management tools supplied by the broker, how to exercise an option, etc. There's much more to simulated trading that seeing how much money you can make. Mark
Maybe these few guys can figure out the sequence of the random numbers, ie. can find from the past sequence the initial "seed number" of the the random number generator, and so can know what numbers will come up next as they can foreplay the sequence on their own computer... It would mean a not well written simulator...