Advice on paper trading....

A

ADONAI1ST

All,

After reading until my eyes are bleeding. I want to just start making some trades. I'm going in circles just reading. Since I have a paper acccount I was wondering if and how can I just simulate some futures trades or options trades. I just want to start getting use to doing something that I know I'm going to be doing. A little R and D if you will. Can anybody help me in the area?
 
ADONAI1ST said:
All,

After reading until my eyes are bleeding. I want to just start making some trades. I'm going in circles just reading. Since I have a paper acccount I was wondering if and how can I just simulate some futures trades or options trades. I just want to start getting use to doing something that I know I'm going to be doing. A little R and D if you will. Can anybody help me in the area?
More...
Excellent idea. Always set your paper at approximately what your live account will be. Over and over in paper until it is very natural. My paper is always going. Sometimes exactly what I'm doing live or sometimes exactly the same but on the other side. I'm constantly tweaking the paper to see if it really works or usually to see where the big problem arises.
Please ignore all the comments about how paper has no emotions and fills may not be as exact as real, that's not important. Paper will really help with emotions since you have made the same trades the same way many times over and over already in paper before you ever go live. But paper is not kindergarten for live trading, for me, it is a constant companion in so many ways. It's especially great on slow days when the live probably won't trade much and paper gives me something to do. Yes, I am a very big user of paper. And if it gets too high since I withdraw no profits or too low from experiments I periodically set the paper account amount back to where the live account actually is. Paper will either expose the falsehoods of the reading or make them click. Good luck and keep that paper going even after you go live.
 
java said:
Excellent idea. Always set your paper at approximately what your live account will be. Over and over in paper until it is very natural. My paper is always going. Sometimes exactly what I'm doing live or sometimes exactly the same but on the other side. I'm constantly tweaking the paper to see if it really works or usually to see where the big problem arises.
Please ignore all the comments about how paper has no emotions and fills may not be as exact as real, that's not important. Paper will really help with emotions since you have made the same trades the same way many times over and over already in paper before you ever go live. But paper is not kindergarten for live trading, for me, it is a constant companion in so many ways. It's especially great on slow days when the live probably won't trade much and paper gives me something to do. Yes, I am a very big user of paper. And if it gets too high since I withdraw no profits or too low from experiments I periodically set the paper account amount back to where the live account actually is. Paper will either expose the falsehoods of the reading or make them click. Good luck and keep that paper going even after you go live.
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After reading so much, from what books to read, to chart studies, to TA to blah blah blah, I was like damn it man. I'm starting to think it's best to at least start making trades and reading about why it didn't works as I go. I just get this feeling nothing will be better than making 50,000 trades vs 50,000 book and threads. Thanks for your help.
 
Anybody here use Think or Swim paper account? I guess it's best to use the brokers platform you are going to use but not sure.......any suggestions. I was going to use IB (for real money) since they seem to be the cheapest but I'm reading they aren't very customer friendly....
 
ADONAI1ST said:
Anybody here use Think or Swim paper account? I guess it's best to use the brokers platform you are going to use but not sure.......any suggestions. I was going to use IB (for real money) since they seem to be the cheapest but I'm reading they aren't very customer friendly....
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Yes, the ib min is 10k and once your account is funded you can activate your paper account. They make it very easy. I think you pay a small fee if you don't ever trade live but the fee is small compared to what going live before you know a little could cost. Their paper account is exactly like the live and it took me a long time just to set up my trading screen the way I like it so you can do all that first in the paper before you ever go messing around in the live account. I've been with ib now over a decade and still use the same screen I started with.
 
java said:
Yes, the ib min is 10k and once your account is funded you can activate your paper account. They make it very easy. I think you pay a small fee if you don't ever trade live but the fee is small compared to what going live before you know a little could cost. Their paper account is exactly like the live and it took me a long time just to set up my trading screen the way I like it so you can do all that first in the paper before you ever go messing around in the live account. I've been with ib now over a decade and still use the same screen I started with.
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You have to find your account before you can use paper with them? That sucks for me then. Guess I'll just use TOS for now. Do you know of another free paper that similar to IB's platform?
 
ADONAI1ST said:
Probably a dumb question but what do you mean by "quantified your method"?.....
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Does it have a numerical positive expectancy?

ADONAI1ST said:
You have to fund your account before you can use papertrader?
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I think they recently waived that requirement, but even then live data would not be accessible until you fund account.

No offense, but if funding an IB account is a concern, you should be nowhere near real time trading at this point in time.
 
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java said:
Yes, the ib min is 10k and once your account is funded you can activate your paper account. They make it very easy. I think you pay a small fee if you don't ever trade live but the fee is small compared to what going live before you know a little could cost....
More...

This I don't agree with as far as SOP for a broker. Why would one need to give a firm 10K just to be able to practice in sim?

To the OP, if you are really hankering to just get into seeing what you will be doing day-in and day-out and what it will feel like at first, there are many other options out there to do it fully for free, i.e. without needing outlay.

Once you get some time paper-trading for free, and your heart is really set on a particular broker that would charge you to do it for free, you can measure relatively if it would be worth it to you to pay to be able to do it for free. (Man, that is so illogical as a concept).

Just realize that there are a plethora of options out there for you. Explore as many as you have time for before you feel you must go live.
 
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