Does anyone know a good free site for paper trading. I tried marketplayer.com, but they only have stop loss orders and do not offer normal stop buy or stop sell orders. Thanks for your help.
The best way I know of to paper trade is with a pencil and paper...and I am not trying to be smart either...if your intending to use a simulator I think your going to run into trouble...use real market data...real market charts etc...and see if you can cut the mustard under the real gun...I am not quite sure what your really asking here but I think I am reading you correctly...I don't know what you have or don't have...are you using realtick or cyber? or do you have nothing right now?
I am actually trying to find a site where I could simulate trades; I would like to be able to use it just as I would, for example, use a Datek account. I think it would be much more useful than paper trading with real pencil and paper.
There Chicago Merc has a decent looking one for futures trading on their web page www.cme.com but it's not free. The fee is about $35 a month. Looks like it's a 90 day simulation (think it would be about $100 for the 3 mo. period). Thought it was worth a mention as it's real time and supposed to be realistic.
Luitom, CyberTrade has a simulator that is free that you can use...it will enable you to get the feel for order entry,executions,level2, charts etc...however, it allows you to make money toooooooo easily...so just be careful in that regard. You can get quotetracker which is free and get data feed from Scottrade for free just by registering....this would give you live intraday charts and time and sales...you could then use real paper and pencil to practice getting in and out of the market...in the meantime you could use CyberTrader simulator for getting use to a traders software execution system...hope this helps ya
You might try real trading with very small position sizes like 25 or 50 shares, etc. Risk is limited but you will actually have to manage your positions. Then just multiply your gross earnings/losses to get your results by the actual number of shares you might have taken if you were trading full positions. Then just subtract commissions as appropriate. So for example if you trade 20 shares and make $2 per share but would have traded full position of 200 shares then multiply your gross earnings of $40 by 10 to get your gross earnings on the full position, then subtract commissions.
there is finally a new feature in Ensign which allows you to paper trade the right way : live data, no way you can 'erase' a trade, includes commissions etc.. http://www.ensignsoftware.com/faq/10-31-01.htm tntneo
In my humble opinion, papertrading doesn't teach a newbie trader a most vital 50% of the game: how to deal with his emotions with real money on the line... It often surprises me to see how irrational some of my decisions are when I have got more than $500 risked on a trade, versus the rationality and cool-headedness of hindsight that I will inevitably apply to a hypothetical trade scenario. And these weaknesses are from someone who professes to be elevated above the status of a newbie <<<= candle :eek: