Demo account or Micro ?

[rb7]

But one needs to understand the mechanics of the fills with the different systems. IB Paper is "top of book" fill on the add liquidity side. Which means you jump to the front of the order book que. In real markets there are people ahead of you, MKT orders, and then the other people with LMT orders that submitted before you.
.

This is a false statement. IB paper trading environment always place limit orders at the end of the queue, not at the front. So it simulates the worst condition.

Ex.:
bid - ask
0.50 - 0.75

If you place a limit order to sell@0.75, the order will get filled only when the market will move to:
bid - ask
0.75 - 1.00

meaning when no other orders will remain to sell@0.75.

IMO, demo account is synonym of paper account.

 

[senumouv]

I think too much time shouldn’t be spent on a demo account, max 1 or maybe 2 months (in case of complete beginners) are good. If one is not able to understand the basic things of trading in such a time: like placing trades, looking at charts, analysing them, applying indicators, sl, tp, etc, then maybe they never will. So it’s no point just whiling away time. After getting a fair idea it’s best to move on to a micro account rather quick because that’s where trading psychology comes in picture. There are couple of good platforms requiring lower deposit to start with which can be helpful for beginners to start with. Instaforex, fxview, xm are some worth checking out. But just beware of the high leverage that these guys offer, can be tempting to use but should be avoided in the start.

 

[Riley.R]

The micro account was created in order to enable traders to conduct trades with minimal amounts and, accordingly, with minimal risk. And at Amarkets I use it without problems

Heard this name before too, how has your experience been with this broker so far?

 

[yana hansen]

Demo account is the only option i see for beginners as newbies don't have much money to trade with.

 

[Laissez Faire]

There's absolute zero reason to risk money while still 'learning' and working out your approach.

This assumes you're actually demo trading seriously. Meaning you'll trade 1 contract and don't average down with 100 contracts using unrealistic leverage if you were initially wrong.

Micros are great for future traders, but you can quickly lose a good amount of money with them as well.

 

[Nicerchil]

I agree with you! Although I did learn use of many strategies on demo, but seems like it wasn't enough. Loss that comes in live trading is unavoidable no matter how much you practice on demo.

 

[shelleybrown]

I agree with you! Although I did learn use of many strategies on demo, but seems like it wasn't enough. Loss that comes in live trading is unavoidable no matter how much you practice on demo.

I would say demo accounts are helpful to an extent. Not just beginners, all traders can use demo trading as the playground for experimenting new strategies. I think a trader should always keep learning. If we start a new strategy with real money wouldn’t it be a huge risk. There are many simple strategies with deep underlying concepts like in price action trading. There can actually be a number of determiners for entry and exit points such as Fibonacci retracement, using cable wick etc. So we can use demo trading for that purpose.

 

[Nealeliff]

I would say demo accounts are helpful to an extent. Not just beginners, all traders can use demo trading as the playground for experimenting new strategies. I think a trader should always keep learning. If we start a new strategy with real money wouldn’t it be a huge risk. There are many simple strategies with deep underlying concepts like in price action trading. There can actually be a number of determiners for entry and exit points such as Fibonacci retracement, using cable wick etc. So we can use demo trading for that purpose.

There are many brokers nowadays which provide free demo trading accounts like Fxview, IG, Tradestation etc. I don’t think so demo trading is an utter useless waste of time because confidence is very important in trading along with emotional control. No matter how many books a newbie reads, practical experience is much needed. Demo trading gives a trader a place to use his potential so when he does real trading, nothing seems odd.

 

[outhoe]

Yeah I have learnt a ton of things through demo trading. I was using a day trading strategy and I wanted to learn the details of moving averages. So I gave real trading some break and got back to the blackboard armed with a demo account and learned about the exponential moving averages. The main thing to learn about the strategy was the reward and the risk ratio. A deep understanding of the technical and mathematical aspects of the EMA reduces risk and makes my profits consistent.

 

[shelleybrown]

Yeah I have learnt a ton of things through demo trading. I was using a day trading strategy and I wanted to learn the details of moving averages. So I gave real trading some break and got back to the blackboard armed with a demo account and learned about the exponential moving averages. The main thing to learn about the strategy was the reward and the risk ratio. A deep understanding of the technical and mathematical aspects of the EMA reduces risk and makes my profits consistent.

Yes, in fact through demo trade a person can understand automated trading and how to write the scripts in trading platforms. I am a huge fan of the MT4 trading platform (using XTB broker) because I know how to write the scripts in the MQL language. When I thought of switching to MT5 platform through Fxview broker, I found that the scripts of MT4 and MT5 are not compatible. So as a scalper in this new platform I was blank like a white paper. I again started demo trading with the MT5 platform on a demo account which helped me to learn the new technique of writing scripts in the same MQL language.