When to start

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#1

Hi fellow members,

I have recently started my journey as a forex trading learner. One of the most important thing that I have learnt is that one must practice in a demo account for as much time as possible before moving to real trading. But I am not able to determine what is the correct time to open even a demo account. My learning uptill now has been only through school of pipsology on this valuable website called babypips. And, uptill now, I have finished Fibonacci chapters. I want to finish all the lessons and complete the whole tutorial.

Is it good time to start a demo account now or should I finish the school completely and graduate first and then think about start practicing?

Regards

#2

Start demoing whatever you have learnt while going through baby pips.

#3

Forex trading involves consistent upkeep of knowledge. Once you learn something, you have to test it, and then retest it. So start with demo account for more practice and knowledge.

#4

start demo immediately and practice next by what you learn from school of pipsology. this way you learn something. doing the school only without having examples and practice next by gets you nowhere

so start immediately with a demo.

for the future steps, dont stay too long on demo as on demo you learn only how the mechanics works but you dont learn the really important things which is self control self evaluation and your own psychology in trading. you need practice and on demo you get no practice. experience grows only on mistakes that HURT you so starting with a real money account will boost your learning curve very high and you will learn very fast.

#5

Couldn’t have agreed any more with Turbo! I personally read about Forex for about 2-4 weeks, then set up a Demo account to see how things work. Spent 2 months understanding the nitty gritties of trading, trading platforms, various strategies, etc etc!
Opened a Live account right after that and only after doing so I got the real taste of trading, because I remember sweating through my palms everytime I had an open trade. Went through this sweaty period for another 1 month and finally got in the right state of mind to be able to trade in peace.

#6

I thank to all the people who have replied to my query. As per advice by all of you, I am for openning a demo account now. I will just revise all that I have read and learnt from pipsology school and then try to apply them in the demo account.

#7

I feel it is important to let you know that the demo account and a live trading account will behave differently. Demo accounts are not subject to the volatility of the live market during periods of large price movements. Your Orders in a demo account can always be met. This is not the case in live accounts.

Also, while demo accounts are great for learning, be careful. I advise to keep your demo account balance as low as possible. When I use demo accounts (usually for testing EA’s) I use a $3000 balance, a 1:100 ratio - always the same.

Another piece of advice I have gave is that when you do proceed to trading live, trade in micro lots - that is 0.01 Lot. This way you are trading in very little, so you will loose very little although as I think someone mentioned above, even though it is very little it will still focus your attention much more than a demo account ever will while exposing you to the live market in a healthy way. If you do lose trades, you can limit your weekly losses to a few units of currency (probably dollars) which can be viewed as a cheap way to pay for a great lesson :slight_smile:

#8

@scottish mike,

Wowww!!! thanks for your post, that seems to be quite strategic help, i must say…
thanks. I am actually looking for these kind of method informations.
just a quick question, though, if you say that demo account and real trading account behave differently, then why do the brokers claim that their demo account function exactly the same fashion as does the trading account with only difference of having fake money?
Also does that mean that two exactly same type of trades, each in a demo account and real trading account with the same broker can yield different results.