I've recently discovered that it's possible to replay the market and trade like in real-time. I don't know whether this tool will be useful to me or not so I want to try it first for a month or two without paying. Are there any free softwares?
Realtime is realtime and replay is replay. Two different things. You can use market replay to replay realtime like if it would be real time again. So you can see over and over again what happened in past in realtime. Second by second, or faster if you wish. So if you would replay oktober, 24 in replay, you would see exactly what you would have seen on oktober, 24 in realtime.
NinjaTrader has one of the best replay functions in the business. If you recorded level 2, it will be replayed as well. Perfect to test any strategies that you develop. You can of course also fast forward up to 500X.
TOS' "ThinkOnDemand" replay feature is pretty good. I *believe* that: (1) it's a standard (free) feature that comes with all levels of accounts; (2) it's possible to open a TOS account with zero funding. But you'd need to confirm both with them to be sure. I'm also not sure as to what specific features or tools are available using ThinkOnDemand vs. realtime trading. I've mostly only used it for simple charting or study development purposes.