How long do I have to trade with demo account?

I’ve traded with demo account around 1 month and half now. I do my business full time, currently my income is from affiliate marketing, but I want additional income from forex as well. Since I do my business full time, I have lots of time staring at MT4 chart, opening trades and gain experience. I won some and lose some. I’m not sure whether I’m ready or not to trade with live account, especially with big capital. Can anyone give me the idea? How long do I have to trade with demo account? 4 months? 6 months? To those who’s going to post in this thread, how long had you been trading with demo acc? Care to share your experience?

do you win more than you lose?
do you have a trading plan?
do you have money to lose?
did you go through babypips school?

Likely no one but yourself can tell you when or how much. (I suggest starting very small)

Hello Azlam

Everyone has a difference learning curve. I think after a few weeks of playing with demos and crashing your account then, you manage to make 4 weeks in a row with moderate yet consistent profits on the same chart using the same tactics, then probably you are ready. Of course the market condition changes a lot and one month is insignificant compared to years of price history. Some would say try at least 6-12 month demo with consistent moderate profits and ideal risk management. I think it is up to you. The real learning is indeed in live accounts. When the emotional gap between demos and real accounts narrows, then you are beyond emotional trading/impulsive decision making.

How many swings do you need to take at the driving range?
Practice putts on the putting green?
Shots from the practice bunker?

…before you can go out and walk 9 holes of golf without losing more than 3 balls, and not “feel” like you wasted the $25 cost to play?

The duration pf demo trading varies form each trader . You need to make sure you have the needed knowledge that can sustain you while trading. And if you want to trade on live account there are micro account offer by different broker that you can open with very little capital that you can trade with to get experience.

Oceanmen is the man listen to him!
BTW Ocean Hit me up in the chats.

I also trade on demo for more than 6 months. it trained me well . I learn all about details of trading . I do many experiments with indicators chart reading Using EA etc, Specially risk management is very important that a trader can practice well on demo.

Hi Azlan,
Did you finished babypips school?
I trade on demo account more than 2 weeks. Try cent account.

Good Luck!

Set a profit target you want to reach on demo and then try to make it done. Note that scalping results on demo are significantly distorted because demo usually have instant execution and on live account you will often get slippaged on entries (price will have to go more pips to bring you profit) as well as get spread widenings, what’s normal for real market. I was using demo about 15 days on Hotforex after realizing it has considerable changes from real account I quickly switched to it to start gaining really useful experience.

I think you should have never started in a demo account, but hey the majority will completely disagree. I think you should trade in a mini-account with a small deposit and small lot sizes where you can actually learn how to trade.

I think that you should be trading with the demo account until you feel more confident about trading with real money.

Try to realize if you are ready to start investing with real money. If you feel so then just go and start investing.

I think that the best practice is to trade live. Because when you lose real money, then you really start to think about why did I lose. On a demo account it’s just unreal money and so your emotions are unreal too.

i dont think that demo accounts would help since there is no trading psychology of real money.

Hi Azalan00IM,

I have never traded on demo account. And since you have traded one and a half month that’s even more than enough to learn about all the tools and possibilities provided from MT4. But now is the time to go with real account and there you should develop your own trading strategy and of course with some small deposit which means micro account.

It’s very risky to trade with real account directly because demo account is good starting point for training how to trade well in many different conditions of market. If you don’t trade in demo account at all so you can suffer unnecessary loss which can happen if you don’t train yourself. In my view, it’s better to learn in demo account for at least 3-4 months to find out the best trading plan.

I traded with demo account and crashed my account three times, i had no clue of how to use the features.
Demo is very important for at least understanding the software. Not to mention, even after i started live, i still made one or two mistakes due to software ignorance (closing multiple trades by accident).

Start with demos, and even when you are live, test new tactics on demos first!!

One needs to trade in the demo account until they are comfortable handling the trading account and the money involved independently such that excelling in the trading business becomes easier for the traders.

I think for most people, trading with demo account first is necessary. Yes, you can learn as much as you can from blogs, forum, ebooks or seminars but the best source of learning that will really work is your own experience. And in forex, to gain experience, you need to go with demo. You need to test what you’ve learn before in demo until you reduce losses as much as possible. For professional traders average win rate is 80% or more. Only then, you can train your psychology with micro account.

Demo account is a considerably different from real one. Slippage, spread widening, emotions distort your perfect demo trading strategy applied on live account. I advice newbies to start on live account trading with micro lots to get used to it.
When I was a newbie I started off directly from Hotforex live micro account with 100 USD deposit with 0.01-0.05 lot sizes. After I blew several times I gained so much experience I’d get for several years trading on demo and reading forums…

I trade with both [I]at the same time[/I]. Sometimes I do things on demo that I feel uncomfortable doing on real account. Demo is way way ahead of my real account. Maybe I should stretch my comfort zone.