I'm skeptical... what would you test next?

[SunTrader]

You can, of course, test this for yourself. They are not identical but they do average out. It's pretty clear that they put your paper-trade on the queue (or a parallel queue) and you get the price that comes up at your place in the queue. If I have to wait five minutes for a fill, it's five minutes on both accounts. As a side note; In the middle of a slow volume day, I have had to wait up to one-half hour to get a short filled.
I've done this quite a bit over the years when a system first goes live or I make changes.
I can't imagine trading a system that I don't first run on IBs paper-trading account. Never had a problem. If you can't make money on the paper-trading account, don't trade for real.
Keep in mind that the demo account is not the same as the paper-trading account.
I only trade stocks, intra-day, avg vol > 750K.
All just my opinion. Wish all the best.

Ok I understand (btw I am not at this time an IB customer) but so I understand further when you are saying testing live vs paper-trading - do you just mean testing on live data or actual live trading?

 

[dholliday]

How much are you paying in comms?
Are you able to negotiate better fees?

I don't remember how they calculate fees. I haven't looked for years. I currently trade either $10,000 or $20,000 per symbol. Fees run < $1 and up. I bought 685 shares at $29.18 today. The fees were $2.53.
I would love to have a large enough account to "negotiate". Oh well.

 

[dholliday]

Ok I understand (btw I am not at this time an IB customer) but so I understand further when you are saying testing live vs paper-trading - do you just mean testing on live data or actual live trading?

I run two instances, of the same system, at the same time, live. One connected to a real-money trading account and one connected to a paper-trading account.

 

[SunTrader]

I run two instances, of the same system, at the same time, live. One connected to a real-money trading account and one connected to a paper-trading account.

That wasn't my question.

Unless you are saying live trading account is trading the same signals as paper-trading account ... one for one basis?

 

[murray t turtle]

Regarding a) 200 shares of AMZN or F, big difference. I would suggest using other units.

%%
THAT\
+ Big bucks or Good %% on deep drawdoWns/ ETFs\good for you.
BUT with AMZN price\no big problem\big, big problem below 200day moving average.
F is above 20dma + good dividend\ but F looks like polar bear food on monthly charts/good trends on hourly charts.................................................
SO AMZEN may not be Ok even if you fractional share it to same size @ F??
I DONT have a problem with you avoiding 1st 3o minutes/maybe a very wise idea\ i mostly avoid first 20-30 minutes\ except for orders that get hit i've put in/ before premarket or more likely after close...............................................................................

 

[dholliday]

That wasn't my question.

Unless you are saying live trading account is trading the same signals as paper-trading account ... one for one basis?

That is what I am saying. Both auto-trading platforms run the same code on the same symbols and get and act on the same signals. They should both take the exact same trades. Yes, for you programmers, there are threading scenarios where there can be differences. But the same is true at your broker.