I have been trading on demo accounts for maybe 3 or 4 weeks before I put in some real money. During this time I have tested different trading platforms until I found one that I liked most.
In my opinion, trading with real money makes more sense than trading for months with virtual money only. The mental aspect of trading is totaly different when it comes to real money. Also the difference between demo account and real account is huge - think of slipage, order execution and requote/unfilled orders.
If I lose $10.000 of virtual money - so what? I simply reload my account. But if I lose $500 of real money, that's something completely different. Fear and greed are two emotions that every trader has to cope with. But this, in my opinion, can be learned best with real money only.
That does not mean that I encourage everybody to take his or her savings and put it into a trading account. Instead, I suggest to start small. With only $100 to $500 and trade mini and micro lots. There are also brokers that offer cent accounts, so $100 will be displayed as $10.000 (cents) .
You learn to trade under real market conditions with slippage, requotes and slower order execution. Plus, if you lose $500 ($5 that is on a cent account), it will hurt you more than if you lose $10.000 of virtual money. A nice side aspect is, that you even have the chance to build this small account up to a bigger one, where trading can become really profitable.
Demo trading is great to learn how a platform works, to learn how you can open, manage and close orders. But the most important aspects in trading show up, when real money is in the game. Start small - and be prepared to lose it all. And if you lose, be happy that you started with $100 and not with $1.000, $5.000 or even more
The more comfortable you get, the more money you can put into your account. But starting with a virtual money demo account and next step funding a real account with $25.000 is something that not everybody can deal with.
