Is a demo account waste of time?

[d08]

What do big funds do? Buy 50 shares a day, because they will influence the market, till they have the amount of shares they want?
Bill Gates is selling at this moment 1 MILLION shares of microsoft A DAY without really influencing the market. Some days the stock goes even higher although Gates is dumping.
Go to yahoo finance and check insider transactions on various stocks. You will find a lot of stocks with buy or sell transactions in the size of over 100.000 shares a day.
Coca Cola bought some time ago over 6.000.000 shares Keurig Green Mountain, Inc. in 1 day!

http://openinsider.com/

If you think orders like that aren't moving the price then you're kidding yourself. For Gates and KO, these are long term trades and moving the price half a percent isn't that significant; for a daytrader 0.5% is a game-changer.
On the GMCR trade, compare the charts and you'll see clearly that the order pushed the price higher.

 

[i am nobody]

It is intriging to me. If the price would go up because of the constant buying, it means that the trend would be long. I always follow the trend, so I would always benefit from the influence, win money, not lose money.
So marketinfluences are a blessing to me. It is funny that in every big crash my systems were already a long time short, and every big move up I was always already long before the real move happened ( in medium long term, not in daytrading).
First thing I do when something happens is watch what my systems did do? Iraqi war, internetbubble 2000, 9/11, bank crisis 2008.... Never had a problem.

I always go with the flow, so no matter what the big boys do I always can take what is left on the table.

 

[d08]

It is intriging to me. If the price would go up because of the constant buying, it means that the trend would be long. I always follow the trend, so I would always benefit from the influence, win money, not lose money.
So marketinfluences are a blessing to me. It is funny that in every big crash my systems were already a long time short, and every big move up I was always already long before the real move happened ( in medium long term, not in daytrading).
First thing I do when something happens is watch what my systems did do? Iraqi war, internetbubble 2000, 9/11, bank crisis 2008.... Never had a problem.

I always go with the flow, so no matter what the big boys do I always can take what is left on the table.

If you're the small(er) fish then absolutely. But in plenty of small caps and some medium caps I find myself to be the the biggest in a given moment, therefore it's definitely not in my advantage. Even if trading with the trend in very liquid instruments, I often see price move away from me in a second when putting on a large position, the so-called "phantom liquidity" effect, forcing me to enter at much higher levels.

 

[bgk]

I know exactly what you're trying to say. I've known people who've struggled with this for twenty years and made little progress because of psychological issues. I will say again, therefore, that if fear is a problem, you need an airtight trading plan, thoroughly-tested and consistently-profitable in sim before you go live with real money. If you don't, you stand to lose a great deal of money.

But it's your money.

This is very true. But even as you make the airtight trading plan and set out,fear is bound to be there. What one should do is try to overcome it. Know that traders are risk takers,naturally. That plus having a good risk management strategy. That way you are able to face losses as they come then fear won't affect you too much.

 

[bgk]

I'm reminded of the hot-doggers I knew in '98-'99. But I've known hundreds of beginners since then who preferred to just jump in rather than put together a reliable trading plan. They're all gone.

She has a choice right now between being profitable in a few months or wasting years just trying to reach breakeven. But it's up to her.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . .

The recommended demo account time period is around 6 months. Would that seem like a waste of time to you?

 

[smallStops]

The recommended demo account time period is around 6 months. Would that seem like a waste of time to you?

You mean profitable demo trading for 6 months?

I knew of a firm who put people up to 4 years on demo trading.

 

[i am nobody]

The recommended demo account time period is around 6 months. Would that seem like a waste of time to you?

That's BS. The only thing that defines the lenght of demo trading is the question: did demo give me what I was looking for?
You do demo trading for a certain purpose. As long as that purpose is not fulfilled you should not start real trading. So lenght can be 2 days or 2 years. It can even mean that you should stop completely after demo trading.

 

[d08]

The recommended demo account time period is around 6 months. Would that seem like a waste of time to you?

What's the purpose of demo trading? Did you just jump into the demo environment without a plan, now are showing some profit and think you're ready to go real? In that case, no, 6 months is not enough.
If you had a plan before starting with demo which had results that are equal to that from the demo, then yes, 6 months was enough.

 

[MMtradex]

I don’t think so, actually in my opinion demo accounts are the best way for beginners to start trading with no risk and get confident before jumping to live environment, when they will be assuming a real risk.

 

[SmartSGTrader]

Practise never hurts though demo acs tend to be slow n ppl dont have the discipline to stick to it. Even if you do for a yr, u have only learnt about that yr. A simulator like the iPhone app Trade A Minute compresses 20+ yrs of data into games and can help test your concepts much more.