Quote from Bearbelly:
Heres what I would do. Open an account with IB for $2000 then subscribe to Buttontrader. You can use Buttontrader simulator for several months for free and if you dont trade your data from IB will cost $10 a month. Then get Quotetracker charting software (free) to work off the IB data feed and you will be set to practice with real time data for $10 a month. THEN come here and other sites and start trading different strategies on the simulator until you get a little bit of an idea what its all about.