DEMO ACCOUNT vs LIVE ACCOUNT

From technical point of view demo and real is the same. You can even copy trades from demo to real.
From psychological point of view the difference is huge.
You can stay cold loosing 100k demo but not 100k real.

togr posted:
From technical point of view demo and real is the same. You can even copy trades from demo to real.
From psychological point of view the difference is huge.
You can stay cold loosing 100k demo but not 100k real.

Exactly, real account has no reset / restart button, the pressure becomes reality.

Everyone remembers their first trade... mine went down US$0.43 and I could feel the blood drain from my head.

Don't execution times differ between live accounts and demo accounts though?

for robot/ea key different is Slippage
for humans Slippage & knee jerk

mlawson71 posted:
Don't execution times differ between live accounts and demo accounts though?

With good broker the diff is minimal

There is a massive difference between a Demo and real account been though the market conditions are the exactly the same.

The problem is they give you 50-100K accounts which have lots of room for bad trades to run and return while other trades are working out. You can take large positions and make a few hundred in minutes while others are running the other way and you just wait for them to return in the correct direction. It takes many large position to force closures in a demo account. It fools you into thinking that its easy money to grabbed all day long.

I found myself starting a 100K Demo account 2 years ago and making a 50K profit in 2 days. I did this several times as I tried different brokers. I turned a 10K Demo into 70% profit in just days last month. But when its real money you make different decisions your not relaxed you don't fear loosing that money and it turns out very different in real account.

Then I started real accounts with just 5000 and start trading in the same way. Well I have lost at least 6 of those accounts to the last euro. I cant seem to turn of the style of trading in 100K vs a 5000k account. Its been 2 years now.

After having lost another account in one night of Brexit I only trade 1000k lots in a very small account and will build that up slowly again and never take large positions ever again. I am going for 20-30euro per day now. Its a long road back to 30K of losses this way.

That is why when one trades on demo they should trade in the same way they would trade with their real account. Otherwise there's no point to the whole exercise.

Licenseed2style posted:
There is a massive difference between a Demo and real account been though the market conditions are the exactly the same.

The problem is they give you 50-100K accounts which have lots of room for bad trades to run and return while other trades are working out. You can take large positions and make a few hundred in minutes while others are running the other way and you just wait for them to return in the correct direction. It takes many large position to force closures in a demo account. It fools you into thinking that its easy money to grabbed all day long.

I found myself starting a 100K Demo account 2 years ago and making a 50K profit in 2 days. I did this several times as I tried different brokers. I turned a 10K Demo into 70% profit in just days last month. But when its real money you make different decisions your not relaxed you don't fear loosing that money and it turns out very different in real account.

Then I started real accounts with just 5000 and start trading in the same way. Well I have lost at least 6 of those accounts to the last euro. I cant seem to turn of the style of trading in 100K vs a 5000k account. Its been 2 years now.

After having lost another account in one night of Brexit I only trade 1000k lots in a very small account and will build that up slowly again and never take large positions ever again. I am going for 20-30euro per day now. Its a long road back to 30K of losses this way.

From technical point of view demo and real is the same. You can even copy trades from demo to real.
From psychological point of view the difference is huge.
You can stay cold loosing 100k demo but not 100k real.

I am of the thought that although demo and live have to be technically the same, demos seem to suffer from the volatility much less. I heard there were some brokers who smooth demo accounts intentionally and thus attract traders and encourage for live trading.

Meltafoz posted:
I am of the thought that although demo and live have to be technically the same, demos seem to suffer from the volatility much less. I heard there were some brokers who smooth demo accounts intentionally and thus attract traders and encourage for live trading.

I have never heard of that happening, but it wouldn't surprise me if it does.

mlawson71 posted:

I have never heard of that happening, but it wouldn't surprise me if it does.

No wonder, I don't think such brokers would be willing to disclose that sort of activity.

If you play football do you always go to the stadium and just play the big game, no. You go and practice and train. Demo is practicing and Live is playing the real game, but you have to do both in order to succeed. Have you seen a professional who has never trained and started playing from the beginning? No! Its all about practice , practice, practice.

Meltafoz posted:

mlawson71 posted:

I have never heard of that happening, but it wouldn't surprise me if it does.

No wonder, I don't think such brokers would be willing to disclose that sort of activity.

They certainly do even worse than that. State Street Corp., a US custody bank and provider of financial services to institutional investors, recently shelled out $530 million in order to settle several lawsuits alleging it was overcharging its clients by secretly adding mark-ups on their forex transactions. (https://smnweekly.com/2016/07/27/state-street-shells-530-million-settle-forex-fraud-accusations/). And considering that the company's assets number in the trillions of dollars, this was peanuts to them.

No one broker will pay you out of his own pocket, somebody must loose.

There's a saying to succeed in business you have to be a crook.

marshadaddy posted:
No one broker will pay you out of his own pocket, somebody must loose.

Broker takes commission or spread or both from each trade.
So the only one who does always profit is broker.
Now good broker would like you to be profitable to trade a lot. By trading a lot you generate bigger profit for broker.

Well, they wouldn't be in this business if they didn't have guaranteed profits.

mlawson71 posted:
Well, they wouldn't be in this business if they didn't have guaranteed profits.

Generally I think: if you see combination of 'forex' and 'profit guarantee', then runaway

GiGio78 posted:
There are several factors that depend on a good Trading, it can be a good system of manual or automatic trading, as in turn psychology in each.

It is important to see the type of broker you work.

That is especially important, yes. One always needs to make sure that the broker they've chosen is not a scammer, because the market is full of them (https://smnweekly.com/tag/scam/). Fake brokers cold-calling clients, others presenting themselves as legitimate brokers, or just plain refusing to allow clients to withdraw their money. However good your trading, if you happen upon one of these it wouldn't matter.