Live Trading or Demo Trading First?

[immy]

A Very Important Concept - Demo/Simulation vs Live Trading

Without influencing your opinion too much think about this:
Would you take part in a competition of a certain skill without thoroughly working on that skill?
e.g. would you run a 20 mile marathon without practising?
Would you vow to climb K2 without practising?
Would you go to front lines of a war without taking proper military training?

Here is the Poll Question:

Is it good to trade on a Live Account without First Showing Consistent Profits on a Demo Account or Structured Simulation Practices?

Please comment as well to expand on your reasons.

[Nitin]

Without influencing your opinion too much think about this:
Would you take part in a competition of a certain skill without thoroughly working on that skill?
e.g. would you run a 20 mile marathon without practising?
Would you vow to climb K2 without practising?
Would you go to front lines of a war without taking proper military training?

Here is the Poll Question:

Is it good to trade on a Live Account without First Showing Consistent Profits on a Demo Account or Structured Simulation Practices?

Please comment as well to expand on your reasons.

Yes Immy we should do practice in demo account untill we become familiar with all the stuff like charts,indies,mt4 etc and all the basic and technical terms, but the real feel of trading only comes when we go live.

I know many peoples who wins in demo but failed in real, in demo we don't hesitate to press buy/sell button does we? and in real we think twice or thrice before taking any trade, some months ago I was trading a demo account with over 90% accuracy and u don't believe that system failed whn I went live. so IMO best way to learn trading can be learn on live account, it doesn't mean we should risk big money, but atleast it should be real. just my opinion

regards

Nitin Raj

[msk185]

I would suggest that you should first practice the skill on a demo account until you can consistently make profit.

Then you should move to a live account with small risk, increasing this risk as you feel comfortable with your ability.

This is the method I have been trying to follow

Mike

[Bettina]

Don't know, whether I know "the" answer, don't even know, whether there is "the" answer, I know one answer which I think to be reasonable, but quoted "Yes" : I know the answer.

Question could be misleading :
Is it reasonable to demo before ... yes/ no OR
Do you know the answer : yes/ no

:-B ???
Bettina

[Kyle]

My 2c worth
Demo is great to learn the fundamentals of the MT4 platform (or whatever platform you may use).

You do need to trade live as everyone seems to be able to be successful on demo, but that is without the extra stress and discipline required to not destroy your real money trading account.

You also need to use demo though, to test our strategies etc, so there is the use for both demo and real trading.

Personally, I traded demo for a year and a half and have been on a "real" account since November last year. In the demo time, I learned how to use MT4 effectively, and tested numerous systems/methodologies until I was comfortable with one particular one. Then I started with a small real account, and have built that deposit total up to a useful figure over time as my confidence grew.

The way I have done it may not suit everyone, but I am happy with my level of learning etc through forex and have managed to get to my position now without destroying a real account (I did destroy 2 demos though - and that was because of lack of discipline brought on by a who cares if it gets destroyed approach - made me realise I needed real money in there)

[Topher]

I would suggest that you should first practice the skill on a demo account until you can consistently make profit.

Then you should move to a live account with small risk, increasing this risk as you feel comfortable with your ability.

This is the method I have been trying to follow

Mike

Agree completely with Mike.

This is the approach I took.

Richard

[Den]

I would suggest that you should first practice the skill on a demo account until you can consistently make profit.

Then you should move to a live account with small risk, increasing this risk as you feel comfortable with your ability.

This is the method I have been trying to follow

Mike


I agree with Mike. When I went from demo to live. I used Micro accounts to learn. To me this was the best paid self education as I found I could not trust demo accounts to be true. So losses were not painful. ( I tried dozens of strategies ).

AIMS (hug) (wd)

[chris2var]

I would say trade a live account at a small risk, ie 10p ~50p a pip.

Trading a demo account is nothing like trading a live account (even with only 10p a pip).
Real money is real money, play money is play money and thats the way you tend to treat it as far as i'm concerned.

Chris