Demo vs. live

Couldn’t agree more - the variable is most certainly the person trading the demo account.

It is yeah, but only up to a point.

Depending on the approach you’re using, demo doesn’t account for slippage, rogue price prints, bad fills, stops failing to engage or the always heavily underestimated psychological pressures placed upon a live scenario particularly when your tactics come under serious stress.

It really is a whole different ball game, regardless the account size.
If you’re mentally tough & running a large wedge distributing really small sized bets you might absorb that stress a bit better than most, but those punters are very few & far between.

Demo just sufficiently enough to become familiar with the workings of your platform then deposit funds & get your feet wet. Iron out all the niggles & quirks with your approach under live conditions punting small size so you’re not confronted with any surprises if & when you decide to scale up.

Not many punters transition comfortably or successfully from demo to live, especially when employing short term based approaches.

Fair enough…

One more thing: even if one transitioned to live trading, one could continue demo trading in parallel, to test ideas for example… Also, you may do badly in your first live trading stint and have to go back to demo… So it is not a ‘once used, never again’ scenario…

Of course you can & that’s a sensible & viable approach. But again, only sufficiently enough to ensure the practical elements of that new idea floats & appears to align within the conditions in which you’re looking to apply it.

As soon as that scenario looks like it’s a goer, transport it onto a live template & expose it to the vagaries of market to obtain balanced feedback. It’s the only true measure of its performance & your ability to control & monitor the progress.

Hawk raises two important aspects of Demo vs Live.

First is the platform, or the trade execution from the provider (broker).

The demo must behave exactly like the live, good to think why is the broker offering a demo, is it to encourage new customers to replace those that have left, is it to lull their new arrivals into opening a live asap, hit the ‘open live’ button is then often not far away.

There are other brokers who see the value in learning, they take a longer term view, likely their demo will be unlimited in time and may actually mimic their live.

Then of course there is the phycology as hawk mentions.

I believe to use demo acct for no more than 3 months. I think that the best use of demo is to learn how to navigate the platform your using. To test any new ideas , they should be tried on live acct, i just use a .01 pip value and the risk is not great. One should have skin on the trade to pay more attention , is a mine thing.

The essence of the demo account is to prepare for the trading environment of the live account. This way you have a relative level of experience when you move onto the demo account as a new trader. You should ensure you master your trading system properly with a demo account before moving on to a live account.

Completely disagree with the statement.

when you trade in demo, if you use a indicator or EA, same signal or trade does not execute in live trading. because demo is a demo, but live account involved realtime execution, chnages made by brokers to the prices, slippage, execution delay, liquidity issues, etc etc.

Therefore, demo is good only to get hands on trading.

but NEVER trade in a demo and apply the same in live and 99% of the time you will loose.

If you do not believe me, open a demo and a real account and apply the same strategy in 2 accounts simultaneously and you can understand what i am saying here.

ALL THE BEST for trading.

When you get in to real trading, after some time you will realize,

MOST HARDEST thing is to manage your trades from your broker.

You mean in case one has a dishonest broker?

I run a demo account with a mirror signal to a live account - I see absolutely no difference.

I trade with manual execution, not EA based.

I also trade currency pairs that are tied to high liquidity markets, the sensible approach to take if you want to reduce manipulation.

If you understand the markets, understand what your system needs to perform correctly and understand how to preempt issues then you can always work around them.

I only see demo against live being a problem for traders who operate on very tight margins, such as true scalpers, in which case you’ve just stacked the cards even more against yourself by starting off on the wrong foot. Like I said before, be sensible and logical.

I want to become a scalper/day trader. I test different strategies on demo. I really like price action, it seems quite simple for me.
I chose the most simple and understandable patterns for me: Pin Bar, Outside Bar, Inside Bar and Bearish / Bullish Engulfing. On the Internet there are free indicators that help to determine this patterns.
I also test indicators, based on moving average (for example, MACD, 50 MA and 200 MA), but actually don`t really find it useful.
My strategy is very simple:

  1. On timeframes H1 and H4 I find these patterns.
  2. Wait for a high/low retest of the first candle.
  3. Look for entry points to the market on M15 and M5/M1 timeframes.

It’s a psychological aspect. I recommend trading with a tiny live account instead of a demo account. The educational experience you get out of the emotional intensity of trading a $1,000 live account is much more than you can ever get trading a $1,000,000 demo account.

Demo Trading is for learning all about the Forex Trading, and through Real Trading, you can make some real money online, and we need to have lots and lots of practice to improve our trades.

Demo account should be the first priority of ever trader and without proper practice in demo account we will not be able to survive in this business. Demo account also enables us to improve our Money management skills.

Demo account should be the priority of every trader and no need ti switch to real account without proper practice in demo account because demo helps us to improve our trading skills and knowledge.

How long you should use a demo account depends on how quickly you learn and gain experience from it.

People learn at different speeds.

The people who learn most from demo accounts are often the ones who know what they’re looking for from them before they start using them.

I admit the importance of demo account as like others. But my trading career I lost interest in demo after passing sometimes. I was active as a newcomer in micro account with Pips school. That was really a great combination. Learn from Pips school and practice in micro account .

I agree, it’s better to start playing real money right away. Demo account in forex, it’s like a casino with candy wrappers instead of money - there’s no point.

Haa haaa. I am not ignoring the demo account that you did. I never used demo. It was my approach. But Demo can be useful if you can focus here with great interest that I lost as a newcomer. but I am not willing to consider it as a casino as like you.