Am I really winning?

[azzauk]

Hi Guys

First post so apologies if this isn't in quite the right place.

I am a newbie currently studying trading with a view to becoming a live trader at some point down the road. I have today started using demo account from Cannon Trading using a software tool called Transact to trade currency futures.

Today I made around £6k (play money) thanks to a pattern i picked up on 6AU9 whereby I traded just on looking at the depth table and I was noticing that there was a lot of orders on both buy and sell that were ahead of the market price.

So for example:

With the current price 0.7946 there was multiple bids to buy the market at 3-4 points higher(i.e. 0.7947-50). In this example I saw this as a strong buy single and 9/10 did well on the back of it buying at the current price.

The same signals worked on a sell too.

These patterns seemed to be happening with great regularity, more so on 6AU9 than other contracts I was looking at.

That said my success has made me nervous. I'd welcome any views on whether or not these patterns are realistic?

Also to date I have been playing with spot markets on demo accounts, whereby the data and prices used are live and real. Am I right in assuming that on a demo futures account with transact, the data is real and the order levels are real?

Any thoughts welcome.

Thanks

Arron

 

[rawrschach]

How were there bids to buy 3 points higher? Or do you mean offers to sell?

If so, then 'size attracts' in general.

 

[azzauk]

I was actually seeing bids to buy at a higher price which struck me as very strange?

 

[rawrschach]

So you were able to buy at a price lower than the highest bid on the market depth?

 

[azzauk]

Yes exactly that, there was bid offers above the current price. I also saw the same pattern on sells with sell offers below the current price which I was able to sell at. This seemed really strange but not having used depth charts or traded futures before I thought id make the most of it and ask questions later, albeit it is only a demo account. These wouldnt be there all the time, a chance would turn up every 1-2 minutes and it would last around 5 seconds or so, just long enough to get in on the action.

Just had another log on to the tool and these patterns still appear now? From your response I am guessing this isnt normal and is just down to crap software?

Do you know if these things are supposed to use real live data for futures trading demos?

 

[rawrschach]

They are often delayed. Try alaron or mirus futures for demos with live data.

What you're saying is not possible irl, unless I misunderstand. Maybe post a screenshot?

 

[azzauk]

ok screen shot captured, as you can see actual price was .7949 but I could see 29 sell orders at .7948 and 10 at .7947 with bid orders not showing any resistence until .7945. Id obviously sell the market at .7949 and 9 times out of 10 this would now go down making me money.

Not sure how to get the screen shot in here so i have saved into a word document which is attached.

Thanks for the tips on suggested demos, do those tools use depth charts?

 

[rawrschach]

Looks like your bids and offers are lagging the time and sales data, so you can see where price is trading before it actually gets there, unfortunately this never happens on a live account.

 

[azzauk]

what a shame

thanks for the help and advice, really appreciated.

 

[rawrschach]

Yes they use depth, Mirus will give you ninjatrader and Alaron will give you TT.

 

[theSheik]

love it

this post is perfect for illustrating how so many punters get sucked in by demo accounts and then get spat out and p*ssed on when going live