Great choice! It does have it's share of bugs, but overall, IMHO, it is the best tool I've found so far! Best of luck!
lol. Maybe jkh hasn't got 3m in paper money to invest. There were many sites I was excluded from paper trading cause I just didn't have the imaginary funds.
ThinkorSwim does NOT require a funded account to use the paper trading account. However, I have only personally seen 1 paper demo account that was available 24x7. That was a demo version of Cybertrader that ran data that was a few weeks old in a weekly "loop" 24x7. Most sites use the data that is delayed 20 minutes so when the market closes the feeds to you close as well. Alas thanks to Chucky Schwab Cybertrader is no more.
For years Barons and others have voted Trade Station the best online brokerage and the best trading software. Their package includes: State of the art trade execution matrix The most versatile and powerful charting around Covers Stocks, Futures, Forex, ETFs, Options and Foreign exchanges Has imbedded script language so you can write your own indicators and strategies The best backtesting and optimizations around The ability to auto execute rule based entries, exits, stops & cancel/replace An online realtime trading simulator Heavily discounted commissions on everything Member rates and volume incentive discounts down to as low as $1.80 per round trip for S&Ps Option Station & Radar Screen scanning Cost $99 per month + exchange fees and free if you make as few as 10 futures round trips per month. We use Trade Station every trading day and have for years, we also run optimizations & backtesting on 6 workstations on a 24/7 basis