It’s best to start as early as possible to practice while you learn about the different aspects of forex. I myself practiced in the hankotrade demo account after graduating from the school of pipsology for more than a month before switching to live trading. It is great that beginners can learn forex with real live data and virtual cash in demo accounts.
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The best time for demo trading would be when you are at a beginner level without any trading experience. Using the demo at the initial stage give exposure to live trading markets and their software platforms.
Having a demo account comes with several benefits. It allows newbies to learn how to open and close positions, read price charts, and practise trading in a safe setting until they are ready to go to a live trading environment.
If your demo trading account starts at $50,000 (as many do), your goal should be to make at least $53,000 after six months. If you don’t succeed, continue trading until you do. But keep in mind that it has to be a 6% return in the LAST 6 months of trading.
The best time to demo a system is after its been tuned for at least 6 months. The demo trading is for further tuning and optimization. Remember there are secrets to uncover. Think about it, why are there no university courses for this when virtually everything else is taught. Its because there are simple secrets that when combined are the key to sure growth and success in this game
This does not answer the OP question, which was "when is the best time to start Demo Trading. Please do not confuse newcomers. Obviously, a new user will not know what “tuning a system for at least 6 months” means. What you are probably referring to is a system developed by somebody else that has had its gremlins tuned out of it before it is let loose on the poor unsuspecting end user.
The question was about using an established demo account provided by a reputable broker, not a system created by a wannabee trader who wants to sell a product to the unsuspecting public.
Just thought this was worth picking holes in.
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Right away. Choose a broker and test out their platform.
Demo is a great way to test out your strategy as well as the broker.
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mondeo, i get the sense you tried to become a trader and failed. If thats the case why do you act like someone who actually figured it out and has the right to speak?
Im not selling anything, just because you keep saying it does not make it true. Thankfully those suited for my team are not influenced by your style of lazy rhetoric
I will mentor anyone who is serious about becoming a trader and you are willing to admit that you dont yet have a working system
If you have this thought of trading forex, then now is the right time to start demo trading simultaneously along with learning process.
I wish you the best of luck with your pursuit, provided it does not cause harm to any member of this forum for which I have huge respect.
Had I walked away from Forex in 2011 after suffering losses that would have been failure. Forex has taught me a lot about risk management that has enhanced our other businesses. It has also taught me to be humble. I did not know I needed a “right to speak” on an open forum. Other members will judge the usefulness of my contributions or otherwise, as I am sure they will yours.
What I do care about is that other members with far less exposure to Forex are not taken for a ride by new members who may have a nefarious agenda. That is not an accusation directed at you. It is simply an observation from participating in forums for the past 20 years.
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For me demo trading is a must right after getting the bare basics:
- You know what order types are (market, limit, stops)
- You know you must limit your loss with a Stop Loss and maybe even know where potentially place it
- You know anything about any entry - price action, support resistance, any indicator - whatever gives you at least somewhat understandable trigger. You will learn that single indicator don’t work but first you need to learn to look at them and read them in live context. Just to be able to understand what guys on such forums talk about
This is it - what transaction types are there? how to protect yourself out in the open? when to/why open trade? I think you don’t need to bother with exiting a profitable trade at this stage (soon)
Deming cycle at it’s finest - Plan (learn trading concept), Do (try it out on demo), Check (evaluate the results), Act (refine / decide what to do with it) - repeat with anything you learn
Once you have some idea on how whole trading strategy works, what are the moving parts and you really feel it - then you may decide if you are comfortable with demo trading. Some people (including myself) are not performing well on demo due to not treating it seriously - it is really above my control. I need to have at least few real cents on the line to invest myself in the process. But to get there, I’ve spent countless hours on demo and lost some money on real accounts. (and I am still nowhere near I want to be with my trading)
Demo is there, so you can do anything you would do live, but without real money, so you can get really far by doing this. Just be aware that there is a time to start trading money I would say, that for most traders it is much later than they think 
So my opinion is - start as soon as possible, stop as late as possible.
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assuming everyone is a scammer is not a sophisticated method of dealing with this. there has to be a better way of doing it. you guys are not thinking about how you make people feel when you label them a scammer when they are not one and also the people watching are now afraid. i see how it can be justified, just like when i give you a dose of your own treatment, i guess thats justified as well
mentorship should actually be encouraged as much as possible, it should be the norm. as many connections as possible to keep the likelyhood of success above water. babypips should strive to be known for their fearlessness, i mean the odds of success are so low that its not the scammers you should be worried about, its your own fear that will ultimately deceive you causing failure. we should be reminding eachother of that and creating an urgent desire for what works so that we can focus on the right thing. the system that works, thats what we should all be working together to build. instead everyone acts like they already know, that is the wrong attitude and i can tell whos a trader and who isnt. when we are cooperating on a common goal, the ego is sidelined and you are suddenly willing to receive new information, yes there are scammers but like i said we have to be willing to risk it in order to be able to efficiently connect people at scale, instead of trying to label scammers maybe focus on educating your audience, a bit more hands off so that you dont ruin a connection that could take off. Advise people to be fearless but also use their better judgement and if you really want this, dont let anyone stop you from pursuing a solution, no matter how unrealistic it may seem to them. perfect precision is possible, thinking this way has worked well for me, it takes a lot for something to satisfy my precision and consistency standards. they are rare but there are things qualified at these standards.
without sharing the process that i deploy in my live account, it is unlikely you will successfully reverse engineer my system, or one of the handful of high level systems that work. not impossible but definitely unlikely even if i share my method in detail, it will still be difficult for you to understand the edge, consistently apply and make a fortune from. even with a mentor it only shortens your development duration, you still have to conquer your pride, there is no way around it you have to test everything that does not work, knowing that you tested everything you could conceive of and that your choice is the best one really boosts your conviction, we are exploring more techniques to boost conviction because at the end of the day we are professional gamblers. we have to believe in our system in order to pull the trigger at the right moment with the right size. the ability to do something different than your system is within your power, its tempting. so yea thats part of it but with the right system it wont take long before you are convinced
demo trade when you think you are ready to go live, you have to have backtested for many hours before considering demo, pay your dues, become a backtester a slave to statistical data
There are few red lights I see:
- You say that there is some “secret” in trading forex
- You claim, that you know this secret
- You are willing to share this secret to some “chosen team” in your private place outside of forums
You’re just making it easy to assume, there is something fishy going on. I really hope I’m wrong, but this is not your first account here and I saw your exactly the same advertisements across various forums (whole posts just copy pasted across different forums). It does not ring the trustworthy tones.
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It’s very good of you to offer to mentor members. I look forward to seeing the thread that starts it all off with some useful content that attracts the interest of members. We are with you - all of us. Show us the way.
Lead us into the light.
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You can start anytime. Trading on a demo account while going through the School of Pips makes your learning more comprehensive.
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People will read our discussion and make up their own minds of who to listen to and follow, it seems like you are the one with the least to offer. Babypips should add a feature to every thread, a voting system for who makes more sense to you. I wonder what the results of such a transparent experiment would reveal.
Maybe more people would change their minds about trading and give it another shot, they wouldnt be so bitter on these forums. I promise you it is possible to make an absolute killing every single day. Do the math and tell me that 100% gains in one day is not possible, there are people that this is all they do. You just havent discovered the selective applications compiled in the right sequence, its never too late, but you have to start listening. Without humility failure is a 100% certainty
When you start to think things are clicking I would say as this will highlight the areas you need to improve on
At the initial stage, when you have gained all the information and knowledge regarding trading. Now when you are ready to trade, instead of investing real money, open a demo account and practise your strategies and knowledge first. When you are confident, switch to a live account with real money.
Very informative post. Thank you for the help.