You can subscribe for a free month of Esignal.On their menu bar they have a trade tab.Here you will find esignal paper trade where you can set up your paper trading. I agree with everyone else that has replied,its nothing like the real deal.I also don't think there is alue in paper trading unless you know what you are doing.For example after a bad day paper trading can be a confidence re-builder. Good luck
One of my long-standing recommendations to new traders is that they get themselves a stack of $100 bills and place it next to the keyboard. Then set fire to them, one by one, as their "paper" losses mount.
Know someone who traded 6 months on a simulator and then went live and was profitable after minor losses afterwards. This person works with limit orders and less than 5 times the srpead, often only 3 times the spread. So it can be done. But no-one says that it is easy, if it was easy then everyone would do it. Depends on your strategy and complexity, there are some discretionary methods that do not lent themselves to be easily translated into something that can be mechanical backtested. (in a software package) If you work with limit orders then you will have to go back over your trades, see if the fill is realistic or not when using limit orders. e.g. was there an extra tick beyond your price, was the volume traded at the level bigger than the bid/ask (your side) etc? Very timeconsuming but still cheaper than finding out with real money. Lets say it in another way: somehow you have to pay your tuition fees, you can do this by using your own time to discover it in simulation or you can spend it in the market and let your account balance tell it to you. The IB demo is useless for simulation, use a frontend like Tsim+ or some others like bracket trader (or autotrader from bracket trader's brother). All have their own "prefered" trading habits. Tsim+ allows you to trade multiple equites, bracket/auto trader allow you to "scale out" after going full in. Different target of traders (position / scalping). Some are simple to use, other's look like a pilot's cockpit so many buttons are there. It has saved me tons of money and is definitely very worthwhile. Can recommend it (depending on your strategy) Good luck.
When I first started day trading, I would only buy only one share of stock and then sell one share. My market orders were free so eventually I lost 200 bucks before I got my money back. After that I started trading up to 200 trades a day. I made 400 percent on my account in two months. If you trade with IB you could only lose 2 dollars and change for each round turn in order to test your system. Since virtually everyone figures you are going to loose big money when you start trading, this may be the best way to go. By the way, the system that I was using then, no longer works and I haven't found a profitable day trading system since. regards and good luck.
I train traders on a one by one basis. They must have a business degree to be accepted. Real time simulators are excellent training tools. We require a trainee to make 75 consecutive winning trades on a simulator before they get real money. 75 consecutive winning trades. Trainees who can't do it will generally fail as traders in our opinion, and are rejected by our firm. Pundits who say simulators are useless have shit for brains. Our trainees have a 80% success rate within four months of working with real money, and we consider the simulator step the most important. Nobody I have ever met has ever said using a simulator is the same as real trading, but to dismiss it as a training tool is the sign of a complete and unadulterated idiot. The esignal variety is OK but you have to make certain rules and figure in trading costs to get a clear picture of the trainee's ability. Good luck.