DEMO ACCOUNT vs LIVE ACCOUNT

fx883 posted:
Something else to note - Professional grade quant software (like the one I use) allows you to create or reconfigure models in a matter of hours, not months. The key to using it properly and profitably is a sound understanding of statistics (along with experience as a trader, as you mentioned).

It would need to be very expensive software,from what I know most of the time these programs are switched off during news events or they go nuts,because fear cant be measured successfully.They can be used for a few months though before the cliff edge disappears.The returns have diminished in the quant backed companies ,most of the exceptional traders have left,now theres a gap in experience, I would use EAs or Robots with extreme caution because we both know stats can be your friend and enemy.Another thing,people are not rational under pressure.

Demo is nowhere near the Real trading. Why? First of all, the orders are optimized in the best possible way. They only go to the Demo Server, managed by the BROKER. You never get real MARKET prices. All trades do not travel the whole road to the market, but only to the door instead. Thus, you just get QUITE OPTIMISTIC PRICES instead. Second of all, the price difference in between the demo and the real accounts is around -20% (not in your favor). So, the best you can get from a demo is approximately 80% resemblance with the real account... And that could be VERY MISLEADING...

MoneyZilla posted:
Demo is nowhere near the Real trading. Why? First of all, the orders are optimized in the best possible way. They only go to the Demo Server, managed by the BROKER. You never get real MARKET prices. All trades do not travel the whole road to the market, but only to the door instead. Thus, you just get QUITE OPTIMISTIC PRICES instead. Second of all, the price difference in between the demo and the real accounts is around -20% (not in your favor). So, the best you can get from a demo is approximately 80% resemblance with the real account... And that could be VERY MISLEADING...

Yeah your right,they have their own plug in to screw with your order,why do you think IT makes up 80% of their staff,very few orders go to market unless its a risk to the firm,if all orders went to market they would be insolvent in one day.

MoneyZilla posted:
Demo is nowhere near the Real trading. Why? First of all, the orders are optimized in the best possible way. They only go to the Demo Server, managed by the BROKER. You never get real MARKET prices. All trades do not travel the whole road to the market, but only to the door instead. Thus, you just get QUITE OPTIMISTIC PRICES instead. Second of all, the price difference in between the demo and the real accounts is around -20% (not in your favor). So, the best you can get from a demo is approximately 80% resemblance with the real account... And that could be VERY MISLEADING...

Demo and real trading are in fact very close.
You can simple copy trades from demo to real account to verify it.
With good broker the difference caused by slippage and spread would be very minimal.

Depending on the broker of course, if a demo account is similar to a live account. Market makers brokers can give you a positive feeling of a demo account while DMA and ECN brokers have a tendency to be very close between the two. Testing different brokers and platforms with a demo account first and then after a few months of demoing, go for a live account with a funding of between $200-$500 will provide the trader with the proof, if there are any differences between the demo and the live account.
 

kricka posted:
Depending on the broker of course, if a demo account is similar to a live account. Market makers brokers can give you a positive feeling of a demo account while DMA and ECN brokers have a tendency to be very close between the two. Testing different brokers and platforms with a demo account first and then after a few months of demoing, go for a live account with a funding of between $200-$500 will provide the trader with the proof, if there are any differences between the demo and the live account.
 

Exactly

hi

yes everybody know already what is differant between real account and demo one is the psychology, but depend also the amount of your trading account, cause bieleve me or not but if you have very big account in real and open some big trade for very short term as scalping just for take 1 or 2 or 3 pips its change everything about the execution and even sometime your trading chart get freeze, i know what im talking i experienced it already, and with a good regulated broker.

we ca say that size matters in that case..😁

Live account you gain emotional experience when you lose money, on demo you gain trading experience and lose time.

xgavinc posted:
Live account you gain emotional experience when you lose money, on demo you gain trading experience and lose time.

I don't think that time should be considered lost if one's actively gaining experience. Time invested in education is never lost, in my opinion.

mlawson71 posted:

xgavinc posted:
Live account you gain emotional experience when you lose money, on demo you gain trading experience and lose time.

I don't think that time should be considered lost if one's actively gaining experience. Time invested in education is never lost, in my opinion.

I meant time-trade [experience] vs money-emotion [experience]
Time spent on demo is potential money gain and true emotional experience wasted in live - but as you say, nothing is truly wasted on whichever area you focus on. (Though, if I knew then what I know now, I would have jumped into a live low leverage, low lot, cent account immediately - even after months of demo, it didn't prepare me at all for live account. If anything it just made me cocky and take on too much risk).

I still stand by my view that demo is to learn the trading platform and should not be used to learn how to trade. You don't demo courses for a degree 6 months before signing up at university and paying the tuition costs... trading is no different. Make and lose real money as early as possible, it shortens the learning curve and gets your emotions in check much faster.

DEMO ACCOUNT vs LIVE ACCOUNT ? Well this kind of questions easy to be answered. I prefer live account and the main reason is LIVE money for real life but not virtual. But another question is to find a good broker that will provide you clear and honest service you looking for

Demos are only accurate for algorithm traders. Live accounts for manual traders are day and night simply because of trader psychology.

coding101 posted:
Demos are only accurate for algorithm traders. Live accounts for manual traders are day and night simply because of trader psychology.

If you can choose your starting capital on demo, yes. These $100k default demo accounts are useless. Rarely will someone starting with trading dump $100k into an account and even less likely will someone get accurate EA / Algo analysis from it (I can create an EA that randomly buys and sells with a 3000% ML on a $100k demo account and never lose, do the same on a $100-$1000 account and it's almost written in stone that it won't surpass 6 months). I'm expanding on your comment, I agree with you 100%.

coding101 posted:
Demos are only accurate for algorithm traders. Live accounts for manual traders are day and night simply because of trader psychology.

If the issue is psychology, doesn't that mean that the problem is within the trader, not within the platform? The platform is just code and mathematics, psychology doesn't factor in it.

mlawson71 posted:

coding101 posted:
Demos are only accurate for algorithm traders. Live accounts for manual traders are day and night simply because of trader psychology.

If the issue is psychology, doesn't that mean that the problem is within the trader, not within the platform? The platform is just code and mathematics, psychology doesn't factor in it.

Trader psychology is a big problem if you are trading manually that is all I said.

coding101 posted:

mlawson71 posted:

coding101 posted:
Demos are only accurate for algorithm traders. Live accounts for manual traders are day and night simply because of trader psychology.

If the issue is psychology, doesn't that mean that the problem is within the trader, not within the platform? The platform is just code and mathematics, psychology doesn't factor in it.

Trader psychology is a big problem if you are trading manually that is all I said.

My psychology was a problem even when I was using an EA, to be honest. The lack of control actually made my anxiety worse.

mlawson71 posted:

coding101 posted:

mlawson71 posted:

coding101 posted:
Demos are only accurate for algorithm traders. Live accounts for manual traders are day and night simply because of trader psychology.

If the issue is psychology, doesn't that mean that the problem is within the trader, not within the platform? The platform is just code and mathematics, psychology doesn't factor in it.

Trader psychology is a big problem if you are trading manually that is all I said.

My psychology was a problem even when I was using an EA, to be honest. The lack of control actually made my anxiety worse.

Your mindset has to change from trader to administrator with an automated system... every EA needs monitoring and at some point manual intervention. It's when you intervene too much that it becomes a problem. Many running EA's will auto trade and manual trade in parallel, essentially fighting each other. Remember, for every manual trade you make, the EA will take that into account which will likely be outside it's scope (adding vegetables to a fruit basket). If you separate the trades with an identifier, you are double trading on the same pair, same balance, etc. causing double trouble. You eat into margin the EA could use, maybe more efficiently. I got frustrated with an EA I made at one point... it traded too slow, in my view. Going through the code, I saw it was trading correctly, my impatience to 'make a trade' was overriding the fact that the market was flat, the EA knew it, my brain was having none of that... I manually drove the account into the ground.

This might help with the over trading,a friend of mine has set up a solution,you can check it out ,it's called chasing returns.I my self learned early on you have to wait for the trade to come along,wait for the right setup,you can't be gun shy either.Anyone starting off should open a small live account,100,500,1000,see how good you are at trading that first.Just remember a lot of this is being in the right place at the right time,you will have a streak of winners followed by losses ,how do you survive? Keep those losses as small as possible.