Hello everyone, I just finished the Preschool course and I would like to know, after which course is the best to start demo trading?
Thank you in advance.
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When you feel confident enough to give it a go. Choose a regulated broker, ideally tier one, who offers a MT4/5 demo account platform, and get familiar with how it works. It’s the most common platform and ideal for newbies.
Practice and experiment for at least six months until you feel confident enough to go live. IMO, I recommend that you keep both capital and leverage low, e.g. $1,000 & 100:1 max. And do not risk more than 1% per trade, with a daily maximum exposure of 5%.
This will simulate the reality of going live at a later date. Best of luck.
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For me - as soon as possible, and to get the feel of these things in practice. Look for youtube videos that explain how to place a trade (or get that information from the broker’s website.
Try to copy exactly what another trader has done. But at least do it in this order:
This is just an example - if you have a written trading strategy and plan.
Decide how much money will be in your bank for the purpose of trading. Most demo accounts start you off with either $10K, $50K or $100K. Try to choose a low value (eg $1K)
Start off by entering just one trade at a time and do not enter a second trade until you have closed the first one. Go slowly. Fail fast, fail often.
Decide how much of your bank ($1000) you are going to risk on each trade (say, 1%, that is $10).
Decide how many PIPs you are going to risk from entry price to stop loss price (eg 100 PIPS). This should relate in some way to the Average True Range recently for that pair. If the ATR is 70 PIPs, try using 100 PIPs to stop loss.
Calculate how many $ / PIP you are risking (eg $10 risk over 100 PIPs is $10/100 = $0.10 per PIP.
Check to make sure you know what the current trend is for your timeframe (decide which timeframe you will be using - I suggest using the daily candles first, and stick to that timeframe for the duration of your demo trades. The less things you change as you trade, the easier it will be to improve as you go.
Decide which primary indicator you are going to use to enter a trade (and a secondary indicator).
Decide what time of day you are going to choose to enter a trade. Should be at the close of a candle of the timeframe you choose to trade within.
Decide in your plan whether you want to set an automatic take profit or to monitor the trade performance each timeframe. Decide if you want to move your stop loss to breakeven after price action has reached your decision price.
Decide if you wish to make use of trailing stops or a fixed take profit level. Whatever that is, reset it in your trade.
Decide which exit indicator you are going to use so that you exit a trade to a fixed plan.
Best of luck.
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Thank you so much, that will certainly help me a lot.
Thanks a lot for your recommandations! really appreciate it!
When you think that you are done with your learning and need some practising, there is no particular timeline that you need to follow when it comes to trading and going live. Just when you start making consistent profits on your demo account, consider it to be a sign to switch to live.
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I would recommend you to start using a demo account since you have compeletd your preschool course. It is important to practically implement your learning. You should practice as much as you can and use various strategies on the demo account so that you can understand what works best for you
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You need to finish learning the theoretical basics before moving to open a demo account.
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To start in demo trading, there is no need for any particular time. If you are a beginner and willing to learn about forex live trades, a demo account will give the live experience without taking any risk or involving real capital.
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This is good info as I was wondering the same thing!
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Thank you, this helped the newbie community a lot!
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It could be at any time you want, just so you get a peek of how the market moves, how you place a trade, how to input lots, etc. But if you want to make the most of it, I think that as soon as you learn the technical analysis tools and found a way to combine them to find an edge over the market.
Like when you learn how to draw trendlines and you learn to use leading indicators, and use them together, that’s the moment when you have at least a lead on what to do.
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Thank you very much, your advice is important to me
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That’s definitely very helpful but I doubt that few strategies are just not possible to implement like the chart patterns.
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Hi,
The question was “after which course is the best to start demo trading?”. When, in the timeline of study, education and practice is the best time? At this stage of the journey, I do not think it is important to define exactly what your strategy is, it is a matter of knowing what to expect of the mechanics of placing a trade. I always think about reading about bicycles, and how to ride them, compared with a two year old (who can’t yet read) jumping on a bike with those stabilizer wheels and just doing it! The demo account allows you to go through the motions. The demo account is the pair of stabilizer wheels.
There is only so much you can read before you Just ******** Do It.
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There will never be the best time until you feel it is the best time now. If you think you have learned enough to start practicing now, then you should start right away. Set your trading goals and make a trading plan accordingly and let’s just go for it with a positive attitude.
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I already said this before, and I’ll say it again! No one ever takes demo trading seriously. Like, for real though. Based on my experience, my demo didn’t help me one bit (aside from familiarizing myself in using the platform). Get your feet in the water! Start live trading, but definitely start small. Then just gradually increase capital as you become more experienced.
And for me that is the whole point. Like taking driving lessons. You don’t want to be learning where the clutch is when you are driving in peak traffic.
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I recommend using MarketMilk to help with demo and live trading, it gives info like what hour has the highest volatility for the pair you’re trading and shows the strength of a trend at multiple time frames
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If you’re a beginner, best time to start demo trading is when you finally understand how the Forex market works (what happens when you go long/short, meaning of pips, various trading orders, etc.). But if you’re already experienced, you should only demo trade if you want to try out a new trading platform.
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