Accuracy of Demo Account(s)

[clayc_989]

First post here, been reading a lot of stuff on here. I'm quite impressed by the advice given by the members here and their general aptitude for helping people out so I'll pose a question.

Understand, I've never traded live before and it's something I'm not completely ready to do but I would like to better understand how a demo account works compared to live trading. I've used OEC's demo and was pretty successful with that, trading only 3 contracts max at a time. I managed $1500 in their two week trial. (Very undisciplined trading, major losses but soon recouped after more research.) I have since then moved to Miruis Futures' Ninja Trader/Zen-Fire demo, which I like a lot more. I believe I will use Ninja Trader as my platform of choice when I go live. (Account performance in this has been hindered with being busy with other projects, I've been profitable though.) I've been dealing with the YM and ES emini contracts as their fast paced movement and liquidity intrigue me more so than stocks.

How accurate in terms of displaying market movement, volatility, price, etc. are such demo accounts? Also, how close is the actual DOM ladder / order fill compared to live trading?

Thanks,
-clay

 

[pboyles]

First post here, been reading a lot of stuff on here. I'm quite impressed by the advice given by the members here and their general aptitude for helping people out so I'll pose a question.

Understand, I've never traded live before and it's something I'm not completely ready to do but I would like to better understand how a demo account works compared to live trading. I've used OEC's demo and was pretty successful with that, trading only 3 contracts max at a time. I managed $1500 in their two week trial. (Very undisciplined trading, major losses but soon recouped after more research.) I have since then moved to Miruis Futures' Ninja Trader/Zen-Fire demo, which I like a lot more. I believe I will use Ninja Trader as my platform of choice when I go live. (Account performance in this has been hindered with being busy with other projects, I've been profitable though.) I've been dealing with the YM and ES emini contracts as their fast paced movement and liquidity intrigue me more so than stocks.

How accurate in terms of displaying market movement, volatility, price, etc. are such demo accounts? Also, how close is the actual DOM ladder / order fill compared to live trading?

Thanks,
-clay

In my experience demos for futures such as the ES and other highly liquid futures (bund, eurostoxx) are pretty accurate. Certainly the prices shown are accurate and the data seems to be just as reliable as the live platforms. The main issue is that a demo account will always fill your order whereas a live one may not. On something like the YM you will get some slippage in the real world whereas you may not on demo. For the ES and bund etc there's virtually no slippage on a live platform (unless you go trading 50 contracts at 3am).

If you have been scalping for one or two ticks then your system may not stand up too well to live trading given the issue of fills, otherwise you should be OK but its better to stick to the most liquid contracts, ES, Eurostoxx and Bund are all over a million a day, the YM is probably only a tenth of that hence the slippage.