Comments on: Stop Trading Demo Accounts

By: bill

bill — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 08:53:51 +0000

i have been trading on oandas demo account and it seems to execute trades very fast, does any here use a live account on oanda, is it the same as the demo or is there a lot of slippage,

By: scott

scott — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:14:49 +0000

I don’t know what software you guys are using, but with GTF demo it’s just like live trading, and I sure have lost a bunch of demo monies. I am looking for better methods to trade, I’ll give this a shot, I sure hope it is a complete method, so many others leave out important details , and to get the details you to buy their stuff. I am not going live until I can make money on their demo.

By: Cyprusman

Cyprusman — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:25:19 +0000

I do not have the experience to argue to much on this point, however the flight simulator analagy is quite interesting. I am a fairly experienced pilot (PPL) and play with MS flight sim (FS). The contrast between the two parallel the points of this blog:

1. If I do flight sim there is no preparation required, when I fly for real it takes an hour or two of prep including risk assesment, weather etc and a plan B for the unexpected. Exactly what I think we should be doing in Forex before each trade.

2. In FS I can do realy stupid things and see what the results are in some accuracy, my experience with Demo accounts mirror this. Far better to get the experimentation out of the way and move well away from gambling!

3. If I fly a new aircraft or route, FS quite accurately models performance etc, need I say more about demo accounts.

4. I do not plan to go live for at least 3 months, about the same ammount of time I had to study for my PPL exams.

5. My first solo was really scary, my main comfort was to stick to the training and advise, stay disciplined and as long as too many small mistakes do not add up to a cluster, there is a high probability that I will be OK.

By: ruby slippers

ruby slippers — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:55:57 +0000

OH my god! I just read all this now I”m terrified- I’m going to start with micro I’m about to go live. NeilA hahaha great post funny- no one can hear you scream hahaha loved it

By: hickh

hickh — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:50:58 +0000

Oh yea; Carlos should have stuck with demo trading. Sorry; not funny but had to say it.

By: hickh

hickh — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:47:14 +0000

I may be a perfect example of what you descibed. I went live a very short time after demo-ing on advice such as this. Yes; probably too soon (my decision). However; and I don’t mind telling the truth here if it helps someone, I opened up two accounts with $500 each. I now have just under $600.00 total. I was down even more but have been inching my way back and I actually feel good about it.
The point is that while I could bore everyone with re-hashing everything you just said, I do not think I would have ever learned as much, correct that, felt as much as I did in trading real money. So last but not least, I agree with what Nick says here whole-heartedly! Remember though; trade with only what you can throw in the gutter while you’re a noob because it’s not a nice feeling to see those candles move against you. (o:

By: Ayman

Ayman — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:41:33 +0000

Nick,

Well spotted and detailed. It’s a very nice reminder for the “Golden Trading Rules” if I may say.

Losing 0.25 $ in a live account gives much more learning points than losing 1000 $ in a demo account; believe it or not!!

Regards,

By: Ken

Ken — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:21:51 +0000

For me, what goes hand in hand with this discussion is position size. On my demo account, I used way too much leverage. When I went live I used way too much leverage. The amount of anxiety, fear, anger, and pure jubilation I experienced was off the charts. After I took some pretty big hits I learned my lesson and started trading an appropriate position size. It’s fantastic because I no longer focus on how much money I’m ahead or behind, but just making good trades. Was it a good entry? Was it a good exit? Yeah, it went 20 points against me, but the stop loss was set below support, the trade bounced off support and went green. I’m much more focused on being a smarter trader than the dollar amount. If the goal is to learn to become a more emotionally detached trader, then there’s no better way to do that than trade real money, with the appropriate sized leverage. When I look back on my journal and see a track record of trading success, I have more confidence while a trade is going against me, and when I pull the plug (early) on a loser, because I know that over the long haul my strategy is successfull, and there will be losers. But I don’t put myself in a position where I’m sitting on the edge of my seat with my heart pounding out of my chest because I’m upside down 3 large on a bad trade.

By: BlastedCopywriter

BlastedCopywriter — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:05:45 +0000

I demo traded for two weeks. I have now been live for a month trading £0.10 per pip. Your advice is solid Nick. Migrating from a demo account a live account was an enormous culture shock.

By: Harald

Harald — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:20:38 +0000

Twinky! Thanks for your comment about micros! What I do is I treat A TEN CENT MOVE the same way I would treat a TEN DOLLAR move. It is identical, really. The object in trading a micro is that as you become better you can add lots……eventually you are trading a mini. And all without risking a LOT of capital while still getting a feel for reality. See if that makes sense to you!!