PrimeXBT trading platform New (2020) → https://tinyurl.com/y66o4pxn
One other tip for setting up your papertrading account is to only set it up with a reasonable amount of money. I know a lot of papertrading accounts give you 100k right off the bat but realistically. how many of us are going to have that much money to start out with? Set it to something more reasonable like 10–20k if you are trading forex (or even less if all you have is 1–5k to trade with) or 25k+ if you are going to daytrade stocks only because the regulations require you to have at least 25k in your account at all times to daytrade (In this case. I would probably give yourself 30k just to be safe).
Think or Swim has stocks. forex. futures. and options. Options are an entirely different beast all together but stocks. forex. and futures are all “yes-no” type of trading while options give you a little more leeway with your mistakes. If you are interested in learning about options. message me and I can help guide you with the right direction and best resources I used to learn options.
Stocks is kind of the well known market for new comers but I would argue that Forex can also just as easily be traded by a newcomer. Also the benefit of trading Forex is that there is no commission off the bat. Most brokers will charge what is called a spread of some number of pips that you are essentially paying back.
Futures trade in ticks and each tick nets you a gain of some amount or a loss of some amount so I do not suggest any new person to jump into futures until you understand the way markets work. Futures charge commission on each contract you buy or sell. It can be sort of related to Forex since a tick and a pip are essentially the same.
The huge benefit to trading Futures and Forex is that there is NO pattern day trading rule. This means you can buy and sell as many times as you want without being flagged for not having 25k in your account.
3. If there is ever a company you want to pay to help you learn. please do your research first. Type in the company’s name along with “review” at the end of your search and make your educated decision off of that. A lot of these companies have amazing advertising but will never teach you the right way to trade. A lot of them are scams too. I read that there was one trading system which the guy had the secrets of the “code of trading” and only he knew the code but would sell it to you for hundreds of dollars. So many people come into trading with high expectations that if I just pay this company to teach me. I can be like them when in reality that may never happen. Always look at their testimonials with a grain of salt. Read the reviews just like you would on amazon for buying a product. I also like to type in the company’s name and add “scam” at the end to see if I get any hits on that. Read the good reviews but also the bad to understand the bigger picture here. Very few will actually teach you how to trade. Also. Reddit is a great place to read up on things like this too. Just add “Reddit” at the end of your search and read up on other users reviews.
5. My only other advice is to look into markets that let you maximize profits. For some. it is not possible to buy 1000 shares of Apple. While trading low priced stocks lets you buy hundreds and maybe even thousands of shares at once. those stocks are too unpredictable because they can be influenced by individuals who do what is called a “pump and dump” schemes. Plus they can be difficult to read as far as what they are going to be doing next (going up or going down). My recommendation (and it is only my recommendation so only use this as guidance to make your own decision) would be to look into trading forex if you do not have a lot to start out with as some brokers (like FXCM) allow you to buy “micro” lots which let you invest as little as 100 dollars in some cases and have a much better chance of working in your favor due to the amount of people trading the same instrument. Note: There are some discussions about forex market makers adjusting the markets so you get stopped out prematurely. While I have not experienced this. it could theoretically happen? So if you do decide to trade Forex make sure you pick your broker carefully and again read the reviews!
EDIT 2: Well it looks like FXCM may get banned from having clients in the US. Apparently they took some trades against their clients to profit on their end and have been using clients accounts to fund their extra expenses. Tread on your own risk.
6. Above all. do not invest money that you are not willing to lose. I cannot emphasize this enough. Work on a simulator until you feel that your strategy works. This means putting in the time to sit down and analyze every trade you took which worked as well as the ones that didn’t work. You need to go back over your mistakes and review why your trade did not work the way you thought it would. Was it because you bought at a high and sold at a low? Was it because you bought at a major resistance level thinking the stock would still go up? Was it because you were impulsive and entered in too early? Was it because you were too slow and entered in too late? This is the most important part about learning how to trade. Putting in the time and work to analyze what you did right and what you did wrong. You will never get better if you do not do this.
7. Consider subscribing to a free daily financial newsletter such as The Morning Brew. It’s a free subscription that is delivered Monday through Friday to your email before the markets open around 5–6 am central time. It summarizes the big financial topics of the morning in short easy to read sections that you can read over a cup of brew.
I would suggest not playing with the entire $100k. Open up a brokerage account with $25-$30k and build it up from there. As for a broker. if you’re in the US. the best option is Centerpoint with Vision clearing. If you’re not in the US. look into Tradezero. I’m not sure about Tradezero. but Centerpoint offers several platform choices. If you search around. you can find out how to open a Centerpoint account with only $30k. rather than the $50k minimum noted on their website.
Personally. I spend my days learning from and trading with Jeff (aka TSXtrad3r) at Live Stream Trading. His approach to trading and risk-taking fits my personality. and being part of this group has been very beneficial to me.
Best of luck on your journey! Prioritize learning a trading system that protects your capital by cutting losing trades quickly.
So I’m thinking about creating something like this. where you are thrown into a random asset at a random point in time. Make trades and fast forward time to see how it played out. Shortening the learning loop. Immediate feedback on your actions. Training that pattern recognition machine in your head.
My rule I didn’t follow: Wait 30 minutes from opening bell to assess the day trend. I saw the 8% jump and thought it was going to be a bull day. Brutalized.
Edit — Just wanted to say thank you to everyone for providing input. Really kind bunch of humans we have here. Back to growth next week.
Most of them were some form of paper-trading. which is not at all what I was looking for. because it has a very slow feedback loop (make a trade. wait for hours/days).
Most notable was TD Ameritrade On-Demand feature. and then some smaller apps. but I wanted something that’s super easy/quick to start with and use.
So I created it — TradingGYM. It’s an early version. but I wanted to get the MVP out ASAP and see if this is useful to other traders as well.
For now. all the assets included are Crypto. since I already had the data and that’s the asset class I’m most familiar with. Let me know how much interest there is in other classes.
