Whew.
I’ve spent months learning about everything I can possibly learn about forex. I’ve been practicing on a demo account. I’ve read enough to know that there are strong opinions about the difference between demo and live accounts.
What specifically are the differences? Slippage, stop hunting (I’m starting with Interbank), other?
Not spending a penny on this until I am well prepared…
Thanks in advance.
The main difference - psychology.
Having real money on the line WILL effect your decisions, at least at first. Either through fear (exiting too soon or not entering at all) or greed (exiting too late or making far too many entries) you will find that real money can ruin a perfectly good system.
You might like to try a small (I’m talking real small) deposit first, just for a couple of weeks or months, to get you used to the feel of money slipping in and out of your account.
Mechanical changes are the slippage you mentioned, spread changes (like sudden spread explosions during news that never seemed as bad in demo) a creation of paranoia that the brokers are after you (until you harness your fear) and I’m sure another couple of things I cannot remember off the top of my head.
Stop hunting is more an action of the price itself as a reflection of the banks aiming for specific price level targets to create easy liquidation of their short/long positions - there is an interesting thread below somewhere about this very subject.
Good luck out there!
Cord
Sounds like me when I started. If you are also like me in that you have a hard time sleeping with open demo trades overnight, then for all intents and purposes, there is no difference.
Yup. This is just like me Viper. I worry about my demo like I am losing real money.
Conversely, I get really excited over a large gain. Until I realized it is not real cash. 
Open a live account. Not a big one, a micro, with say 25 bucks in it. Something that won’t hurt.
The difference will be that even though small, your trades will have real-time consequences.
That will prime your head for a live account with larger lot sizes better than demo ever can.
Whatever you do, be CONSISTENT, and totally grounded with your system rules. If it works in demo, it WILL work live, that is if you can conquer the uncharted space between your ears;)
Cheers!
Thank you. i was rather hoping that the psychological aspect was the major difference.
BTW, trades open overnight…you must have balls of steel.
People who leave trades overnight are usually trading on hourly or higher charts. There are only 8 or so candles by the time they wake up (or less)…
Not quite so difficult when you trade a [B]12 Hour Time Frame. :)[/B] I would not leave anything below 4H overnight, as according to Murphy’s Law - anything that can go wrong, will go wrong! :eek: Thank goodness for Stop-Losses!
Happy pipping!
I am leaving a trade open overnight tonight. It is already up to an acceptable gain so I am going to see how it plays out over the night.
Yes the psychological aspect is the biggy, happily these days you can start off with micro lots and build from there.
It’s very important at this stage to get the trading discipline right and develop good trading behaviour, it’s very difficult sometimes to undo bad habits once they get a hold of you.
Go ahead with your LIVE account. Do test out the limit of your psycology aspect.
Control the 2 towers of your emotion, which are Greed & Fear.
With Live account, you start the journey in understanding yourself better, journey in manuevering your Greed & Fear… Exciting journey…
Let’s everyone here help you thru this journey.
In your mind.
For certain amount of money brokers will trade against you.