It would be very useful, and imo logical, that the demo system should replay the previous day's data instead of random data, where today becomes the previous day after the regular trading day ends. Not sure how that would handle 24-hour markets, but some reasonable thing there is ok. It can't be worse than random data. This is not hard to do. Just use Etherea (or similar packet capture software)l to capture the packets, and then replay by pumping those into your demo system.
so after 8 years you still need DEMO I knew trading is hard, but is it impossible are we all short term fools ????????
most here use demo mode only. waiting for the Holy of Holy Grails to appear before going live with their $5000 accounts.
The "I already have an account" demo mode is good. I've been using it to test strategies and its very close to the final results. The "show me TWS" demo mode is just for doing that - nothing else as IB doesn't want to be a free data provider, even delayed to non-customers.
I think you are reading too much into me wanting to use the demo account. I have a normal IB account and I am developing the system on the "real simulated account." But on weekends or at night, there is no (real) data. That is a huge time waste for me. It is no extra work to have my systems running at all ours of the day training. You say, well, why don't you get NYSE TAQ data and write a simulator to test your systems? I could do that, but the costs are enourmous, not just in data fees, but in programming time. Finally, would you rather not have real data instead of simulated data? IB is an extraordinarily reasonable firm and they follow the golden rule of the customer is always right, and if enough people say they desire something, by gosh it eventually gets implemented. You guys have no idea how huge this is. Trading is hard, and as others have said on ET, many are called, but few are chosen.
Completely understand and support your idea of turning demo-mode into something really useful. The thing that I cannot share unfortunately is your trust in IB wanting to improve things. E.g. many people asked them over years to make it possible to allow historical downloads on weekends. IB obviously does not care.
Weekends are when their servers are mostly non-functional under IB's I.T. load testing updating etc... I certainly understand why they don't want to have connections during weekends. Keeps costs down for them and hopefully their customers. Now the idea of flipping a software switch and say archiving 1 or 2 days of data for "connecting" to the demo during the weekend is a great idea. I'm with you folks on that one.
it would be better, if you can choose between two..current and what you propose. i like current IB demo the way it is. very useful,if you trying to replicate and protect yourself from some crazy events. like gaps,trades above/below current prices,yous stops etc..