How long to demo trade

don’t think of it as demo trading, think of it as paper trading.

Paper trade until you have a solid trading plan, then you can go real. If your trading plan starts giving you problems, you can always go back to paper trading until your plan is solid. good way to limit your losses when you feel you are having a losing streak. why take your losses on your real account if you start losing your sync with the market?

Demo accounts are a lifelong tool for a trader. :slight_smile: IMO

It would all depend on what your learning capacity takes, and how long you feel you should demo trade. You can’t judge the length of your demo trade with that of others, as it may take long to learn for some persons.

It would all depend on what your learning capacity takes, and how long you feel you should demo trade. You can’t judge the length of your demo trade with that of others, as it may take long to learn for some persons.

I think it depends on your respect for money, and how much money you have.

Demo trade until you get to the point where you’re happy to risk real money.

Risk as much real money as you like until you get to the point where you’re worried about losing it.

If you’re wealthy and have a spare money lying around then you’ll learn 100 times faster (as its emotional) if you deposit money into a real trading account and be willing to count it as a complete loss when you wipe the account.

You should trade on Demo as long as you have developed your winning strategy. What is the point of opening a real account if your Demo is losing?

If you don’t develop a winning strategy, then you can still open a real account, but just for hobby:)

I demo trade for 6 weeks but that was after spending and losing quite a money on real account. It really helped me a lot in improving my trading.

For me, I demo trade for several days only to get used to brokers platform or when I bust my account,
In the end my demo is the real account where I can feel the market and all of emotion which is problematic to traders,
what I found:

  1. Trading is about discipline
  2. Trading about mental control
  3. Its about defending ourselves from margin call

I spent about 3 years on demo, which was what it took to get to the point where I was breaking even most weeks, in retrospect, I probably should have switched sooner.

In my opinion, You Should demo trade only until you fully know your trading platform,
And not a day more,

And ofcourse, you must have a working method, after that you Should open a live micro acount with real money,
The reason for that is because you Cannot go from demo to a winning trader even if you have a method that show Good profit in backtesting and even forward testning on demo acounts, Why is that you may ask? The reason is your ego and psychology,
You do not yet master your self on a psychological level, you might think you do, but believe me, you do NOT,
The only way to learn to master this is screen time on a live acount, a small micro acount is ideal because at the same time you feel the heat of battle, you dont risk much money, you Should be prepared to loose your first acount, the fear and greed Will make you do things that is not in your strategy, such as, exiting winning trades to soon, waiting to exiting loosing trades too long, make entrys too large to get even, and you name it, fear and greed is powerful emotions and it take a long time to conquer Them,
This is something you Cannot experience on a demo acount, and you need to, so there is no reason to spend more time Than neccesary on a demo acount, it is just a waiste of time. There is no fear of loosing papper money, so that is worthless training, the psychology is the hardest part to master and probably Why there is so many loosers in this game, been there, done that, take it from a guy with 5 years of live trading experience, and im still not graduated.

3 Years is a hell of a time, I only would say that 3 months are too much on demo trading. Then you must switch to micro or cent account and start trading live in practice format.

These days, it is not proper for one to demo trade for more than one month. I think the demo platform is just to help you get familiar with the many options of trading such as “how to place a trade” How to set ST and TP, how to use the charts and how to open and close a trade. These things wont take you more than one month to learn. After learning these things, you need a micro account to learn how to trade properly.

yeah, the same thing

To study trading ‘on paper’ is one thing, but to practice and become proficient in the art is quite another.

Almost anyone can make money on imaginary trades, for these require no risk of any kind - the mind is free from the strain which accompanies an actual venture; fear does not enter into the situation; patience is unlimited.

All this is changed when even a small commitment is made. The trader of slight experience suffers mental anguish if price does not go his way; he fears a loss, hence his judgement becomes warped, he closes the trade in order to secure mental relief.

As these are symptoms of inexperience they cannot be overcome by avoiding the issue.
The business-like thing to do is to wade right into the game and learn to play it under conditions which are to be met and conquered before success can be attained.

After complete absorption of every available piece of educational material it is best to commence trading in small lots.
This may not suit some people with a propensity for gambling.

The above words of wisdom are not mine, they are the words of Richard Demille Wyckoff, perhaps one of the most forward looking traders of all time. He had a passion for educating ordinary people at no cost to them, he hated to see them lose their money.

You are right, once you know all the necessary operations that are required to execute trades, then you can open a micro/cent account and can practice easily on it.

It depends on person to person. There are lots of people who can learn this trade within 2 to 3 month and on the other hand there are lots of people who need 5 to 6 month to understand the basic of this market. From my personal experience i can say that maximum newbie can learn this market within 2 to 3 month if they are serious and committed to themself. Don’t be so happy if you do well in demo trade. Keep in mind that real trade is different. The idea behind Demo trade is that it would help you to understand how Forex trade works. More importantly, you would also able to find out your mistakes in demo trading and that would help you immensely in real trade.

I find i treat my demo account as if it was real money, because then i take more realistic risks. i have only just started trading and have been using my demo account for just under a month. I would start thinking about converting to a live account within the next month or so, but use a demo until i become confident enough to use/lose my own money! Plus i want to enter some trading competitions and you have to have a live account…

I think I’m going to trade with a demo account until I can consistently make a profit with it…
Otherwise I would not put my money on the line. Do you think it is a good idea?

How long did you guys use a demo account before trading for real?

Depends on who you talk to. In my opinion it is a terrible waste of time as you do not learn anything, others view it as important so forget what others think. As long as it makes sense to you, do it. Just remember you can’t and won’t learn how to trade in a demo account, just like you won’t become a golf player playing it on a video console. If you can’t afford to lose $200 in a micro account while you learn how to trade then you should not bother to start. That’s just my two cents.

I suggest to trade micro accounts. I think you need to feel greed and fear. Paper accounts you will fool yourself too much and loose interest. $100-$200 micro account is not that much to lose. Then if you can trade three months well, then maybe up it to $1000 and grow slowly…

Use a demo account until you feel you are ready to take the risks, remember never use the money you are going to cry over if you lose it all, ie: use ur going out to party money or similar things you can cut n save.