Hello, looking for a decent mock trading site that will allow me to 1) both buy and short 2) choose from a generous selection of stocks 3) "play" anytime/day I want Basically, a simulation that is as close to the real thing as possible. I've been involved with ones a long time ago that limited the types of orders you could make, the stocks you could order into, and the period with which you could play.
Send TudorJones a PM, he's even gone as far as to set up an entire paper fund. I imagine he could offer some insight to what you're looking for.
http://www.updown.com/ Registering is painless and they never spam you. Best paper trading site I know of. Look me (NoProblem) up when you get there!
Paper trading sites that i have seen are www.WallStreetSurvivor.com (Dont like it to much because its more of a game/competition feel like if you dont want to participate in the competition its still right there in your face ever time you go to the site. and you cant set your start amount) http://simulator.investopedia.com/ (This one is ok you can set your start amount but the commission of $19.99 sucks big time) vse.marketwatch.com (My favorite since you can set your start amount and the commission you pay, And its a very clean looking site even the over view of your portfolio looks good.)
i use thinkorswim paper money. if you go this route, make sure you have a real-time quote feed from some place else. i use quotetracker for quotes.
WallStreetSurvivor.com is legit - great for competition as aforementioned. Yalicoo.com is decent - again, competition based.
This response confuses me. Do you mean to imply that thinkorswim gives delayed prices on the market (presumably 20 minutes) but you go out and find reali time data on which to base your decisions? What would be the point of doing that? you'd just be cheating yourself! I'm sorry if I'm absolutey wrong here and just misunderstood your post. Oh, also, http://www.howthemarketworks.com/ is a paper trading site. Lets you choose starting value and commission rates. You can also run three different accounts at once. Problem is the data feed is delayed. So if you are going to use it you need to isolate yourself from real market data which can be difficult.
If you just want to paper trade for like say 3-6 months or so dont you need a have a funded account to paper trade on the ThinkorSwim platform?