Balancing between practice and theory in trading

Hey, guys!

I’m new to forex and I’ve been doing the school of pipsology. Since it’s a really extensive course, with a lot of information, I was wondering: Should I start a demo account to practice while I go through the course or should I finish it first?

Do you guys have any tips and advice about how should I approach my learning/practicing in trading? I currently have a full-time job as a data engineer and I know that will take years to start making money, so I’m interested in having a good learning curve and I’m not worried about not making/losing money.

It’s easy to get lost in all the information available so, if you can, share with me your thoughts!

Thanks :slight_smile:

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As with all learning / research / practice, set objectives and a time-table. You will not get much benefit from a demo account if you decide well I’ll just trade for free and I will learn. That would be like sitting in a library and staring at all the books.

Decide what you want your demo trading to do - what it should achieve and how long you will take to do this. If you can’t yet decide these things, continue with the training course.

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Good mindset. I would suggest you use a demo account from a regulated broker to practice and experiment. Get to know how the platform works so you wont make mistakes when you go live - which is a whole new ball game. Live trading will test your emotional control whether you’re making wins or losses.

Start off small and gradually progress through the gears focusing on process not profits. To be successful you will need to know yourself inside out.
Best of luck.

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I say just demo until you understand what all the buttons do, and understand the basics of buying and selling. Demo for a couple months and try out your strategy.

After that, trade live with the smallest amount possible. It’s real money, but a quite insignificant amount.

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I have to work with that strategy after creating the strategy. Need to build more in-depth knowledge about it. For this, you need to gain knowledge about this subject by doing a demo platform or backtest.

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Basically you start to apply your rough understanding => get market response (loss or profit) and use this info to polish your trading system. It can be really simple like support or resistance trading but watching price action near the levels you may get an idea how to improve entry points, pick right position size, determine stop loss width etc.

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Today I met an interesting topic about learning and practice in traiding, free interactive forex course:

Definitely practice while going through it. At least for me, if I don’t practice what I’m learning, either I don’t absorb it or I lose interest. Even though demo trading while studying will delay your progress in completing the courses, at least you’ll be truly involved in the process.