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I am just learning and want to paper trade but, it appears, the exchanges only offers delayed futures quotes on paper accounts.
Is that correct?
If so, how do I practice?
Thanks
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Get Ninjatrader. It lets you download a full days data down to tick level and replay it at any speed while placing sim trades. Perfect way to practice.
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We trade using Al Brooks Price Action and record our entries/exits in public for accountability.
You should paper trade on the platform you plan to use in live trading. If a broker has delayed data, like thinkorswim, you can often call them and request live data and they should give it to you with no problem. Like others have stated though, there's no need for live data in order for sim trading to be beneficial.
What's the downside? If your chart shows only delayed quotes, then your simulated trades will always be consistent with the data you have -- you're not looking outside your chart, so a profitable trade would still be profitable in your paper-traded world, and a loss would still be a loss. Realtime data wouldn't ever be a factor.
You'll need current, live data for real-money trading, but not for sim-type practice.
The only time this would not be true would be if you were trying to trade based on just-announced news, where you would obviously need to be using realtime data. But trading after or even as news is announced is a good way to always be late, since others will have anticipated it ahead of time (and ahead of you. )
If you're trading just on the action of price as shown on your chart, delayed data is perfectly OK.
PM with any questions about Cannon Trading (800) 454-9572 (310) 859-9572. Trading commodity futures, forex and options involves substantial risk of loss. The recommendations contained in this post are of opinion only and do not guarantee any profits. These are risky markets and only risk capital should be used. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.
The only free / non-cost would be Ninja 8 w/ downloaded data set in replay. NT also offers Kinetik daily for free.
Multicharts is also nice, it allows you to move forward through a chart bar by bar. Apply an indi / strategy, hit the play / forward button and you're up & running. Multicharts does require a data connection which will be an additional cost (unless you want google daily data)
The easiest way I've found is open a TOS account and fund it with something minimum like $50 (obviously you can't trade with this). Live Chat them and tell them you would like the live data turned on. They'll see you have a "funded" account (they don't have a minimum to have live data) and they'll activate the live data in a few minutes. With it funded, however little it is , they won't put a time limit like months on your paper trading with live data. TOS data may not be as fast as a true dedicated data provider, but it will do fine for paper trading, etc.
TOS isn't a good choice for going live if scalping because of the very high commissions which are over $6/round trip but it is a good platform to learn on and will do time, tick and range bars with lots of indicators and has a good DOM with the live data. Use the active trader tab. If you are swing trader or longer targets, then the commission may not be that big of a factor.
I personally don't use their reports to see how I am doing because of the high commissions which makes you feel like your not getting ahead if you are learning to scalp say 4-10 ticks on ES. Rather I put my trades into a spreadsheet and add a normal lower fee brokers commission to the trade to see where I'd be. Also keep in mind on paper trades/sim you get filled almost immediately and in a live trade you will have more slippage so you will not have the immediate same success on live even if everything else is the same including the mental aspect of live trading.
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