Topic: Virtual trading before actual one - pros and cons (Read 799 times)

One problem with virtual trading is that the trades won't reflect on the supply and demand like with real trading. Every buy and sell order has actions on the price.

For me I think the reason why people lose in real life and win in virtual trading is due to their emotions in virtual trading they are calm and think rationally,
While in real life we have fear and emotion as our enemy we also have stress so our decisions are clouded and we couldn't call better judgement on our every trade.
We could easily make trades in virtual because there isn't any risk involved while in real life we know how hard it would be to make mistake that is why we lose some opportunity when we see's one.
We could easily take our mistake as experience in virtual but in real life we would be consumed by depression and lost.

In first place, trading is not just a simple making a prediction about the market trend if this is going up? or going down?, do I make an investment right now ? or hold for a meanwhile?. Trading is a risky thing and some of them are falling immediately and losing their funds by just having bad decisions. If you want to make trade why not go with these.

Learn trading with books.
Learn trading with the guide
Learn trading with the use of sources on the internet.
Learn trading with the use of experience of other people.
Learn trading with a demo account.
Learn trading on your own.

There are a lot of newbies wanting to use a trading bot because they think its easier if someone makes a trade on your account, and for me, this is not recommendable because there are a lot of mistakes might use with the bot, also copy trading this is not good for me, because you cannot know what are the things could possibly do by the other traders.

Trading is all about your own pace.

Experiencing the thrill of the possibility to lose or gain money is the most rewarding but I do not agree with the statement regarding virtual trading. Virtual trading helps you experience trading risk free, yes it will not make a proper mindset but only if the aspiring trader does not want to learn things. I prefer risk free knowledge and experience rather than losing money in real time, you might not be disheartened by your losses but not everyone is the same. If you are encouraged by your losses, that does not mean that others might be the same as you getting encouraged.

But most common mistake is that people do tend to make use of huge money when they are just starting which is pretty common which they should at least do the opposite thing like trading with peanuts and try to take grasp of everything before going on big move or risk.Virtural or demo trades is totally different when it comes to emotional aspect.You wont really get that much serious if you do know that you arent risking something which is important ex. money.If you do know that you
are only making trades with fake or virtual one then you cant really be just too serious on what you're doing.

When you spend that virtual money like it means absolutely nothing and you try to make profit that way, you are not in the mindset of a true trader and that is why you will lose. Not on the virtual one but in the real one because you never really learned.

People should not do virtual trading, it does more harm than help, people can't learn trading properly without actually putting up real money that they could lose, if they put up real money that means you could actually end up with fear of losing that money and that will make you a much better trader. Do not forget , 80% of investment is "not losing value" and not "making money" so with virtual trading you are not feeling the most important part of the crypto trading world, the part where people try to not lose.

If you want real experience after experiencing virtual trading, use small funds at first. So you can feel what it is like to use your own money. Good traders don't start with big money, they start small until they learn the ins and outs in trading. And since crypto trading is a very volatile market, one should keep in his mind that use funds that you can afford to lose.

Actually, you can't feel the loss if you are just in the trial mode, it very unlikely when you are using real money that anytime will be lost at your hands. The market is so tricky, volatility keeps so wild, and that it brought risk in trading especially when you are just a newbie. But that is how we adopt the market changes, we need to adjust and find a way that it could help us to make our trades and trading experience better and profitable. Yeah, it cost a lot at first but later on, we finally get the strategies that we applied to have a better result.

I started with the virtual trading and it helps a lot because it will make you a better trader in the future. The only cons I see on virtual trading is that, you don’t earn the money you make beside this one for me, everything works well. There’s a lot of way to learn trading, better to try the virtual trading first so you wont lose your real money that easy.

I think virtual trading is a good thing, and is one of the additional features that some exchanges has these days that can be really helpful. And I will advise that anyone who have not had any experience on trading should first of all get to virtual trading to get an experience of what trading is really about and how things works.

I have tried virtual trading a lot of times and it helped me make the decision for myself. Day-trading is not a thing for me, because based on the experience I have had with virtual trading I didn’t think it was something I could continue with.

Even though I am not a newbie in the trading world, I have used virtual trading several times for practice. Because in my opinion
virtual trading is good enough to try various trading strategies, and also can train our trading skills to increase. Because practice
in virtual trading we are not afraid of losing money, because it doesn't use real money. So with virtual trading we are free to experiment
in finding the best trading strategy.

When emotion got already involved then its already hard to control even if you do say that you've been trying to practice it when you are still on demo.It is way more different
yet its hard to presume out that you've become serious when you do know that you arent risking something unlike when you do trade directly with real money then the thrill
and being serious would be there since you do know that you are risking real money here.Real money= Real mistakes = Real learning/experience.This is why i had skipped
out demo trade but it isnt bad to use this feature to familiarize the basic terms and usage but for the actual trade or engaging with moving prices then
its much preferable go with live trading.

Being lucky in virtual one and regular one doesn't really change much as long as you try them both for a long time. So, let's assume you got lucky and you end up winning a lot in virtual trading, if you go to real one right away and lose that is a bad thing and you should not do that, however if you do virtual over real one for a long period, like 6 months or even 1 year that means you could actually end up with both lucky and unlucky situations and you will be fine.

Honestly speaking waiting for 1 year would be difficult because that is time you are missing out on profit, but you could just buy bitcoin and put it aside and forget about it for a year which means most probably you will make money from bitcoin while also learning about how to trade in the virtual one.

I have actually tried trading with a demo account before and have clear trading strategies listed. After 2 months, my strategy is quite good, I have made 200% more return than my principal. But when I trade with a real account I often suffer from a lot of psychology when my position is at a loss. despite practicing a lot of psychological exercises on demo accounts, but when in practice it is still the same.
So I suggest we should use with real accounts and start trading. It is the fastest approach to practical knowledge and gives us the most lessons. Remember, only use accounts from 50 - 100 $, do not trade too much at first.

One way or another, virtual trading provides certain advantages for a trader, especially for a beginner, thanks to which you can hone your skills and gain some experience. In fact, you do not need to be too confident in your skills in real trading, because you need to be always careful and attentive, and you need to understand that excessive risk can lead to hard times. The trader initially understands that he does not lose anything in virtual trading, and therefore can risk as much as he wants, but not in real conditions.

I believe that if you get too lucky with the virtual one you might get cocky and end up doing something wrong, it is not really suggestive that you should do virtual trading and think that results there could be the end results with your real trading as well.

When you do real trading things could be very very similar to virtual trading in almost every aspect of it, but one time getting lucky in real or virtual trading could lead you think you are awesome and do more, always be careful about that. The hurtful part about virtual one is the fact that if you get lucky there and go out and do real trading and lose, you won fake money but lost real money, if you go into real trading and got lucky once and then lost, you earned real money but lost real money as well, so that is why always try to remember it is virtual and not real.

I think long term trading is much more beneficial for us than virtual trading if we don't know about virtual trading there are types of risks in trading such as waiting for the market to come back against us and long term trading. With good analysis if the trade goes in the opposite direction then there is no problem because the loss and after a certain period of time the market moves back to the previous place. Profits tend to be higher so in my opinion the advantages of long term trading seem to be less than the disadvantages and less risky than virtual trading.

It might work for some people, but wouldn't recommend for future run to be honest. The reason is with your "virtual trading" a.k.a demo account, once you get more win/profit, the ego will be slowly filling into your head and once you go to the real one and you get a big lose, you will be dissappointed at the rest of your entire life.

Also, when you are losing on your demo account, you can't feel the sense of emotion, anger, rage when the condition is not supposed to be. You can't control your money and control your emotion when doing the demo account because it's not your money afterall.

This commonly happened to newbies out there that expecting easy returns to the trade they are doing, Trading has a different processes and the first step is understanding, practicing and executing the knowledge they accumulate on their early stages of being a trader. Infact I do have a friend who see me gaining profit from trading, I think he taught it was easy and he secretly trade without telling me or asking advice from me or on my other friends, We just found it out when he losses his capital. This is a common mistakes of people who see trading as an easy profit job.

In addition to your comment demoing also help a trader to perfect a trading strategy this would also enable the trader to test the water very well before going live, I have read touching stories of traders who went live and got rekt its a known fact that 95% of forex traders lost their funds or portfoliothis are mostly newbies who had not practice well before going live, I also agreed to the fact that testing with a small amount is also advisable this will enable the trader to test emotion and fear associated to trading as a newbie trader.

Yeah, but at the time losing during real trading is a must, it will happen and you can't avoid it, there is not a single person in the history of the world who has never made any loss, even warren buffet made a loss, everyone does it. What matters is how you react to it, some people lose money after they invest into bitcoin and they start topics like "is bitcoin secretly a scam by government" or whatever, they are idiots and they should not be trading in the first place.

However if you lose money and realize that it happens and you should move on and realize that as long as you have more profit than loss in your trades, you end up in benefit and you should focus on that part, you will be fine.

I think its not to learn anything about profit making,its just for the purpose of identifying how these things works,once they know about trading then they can make or learn about profit making strategies which needs real money so they can feel the real pressure while making trading decisions.

I will add that we have to lose our deposit several times to understand trading. You can't learn how to trade on a demo account, because there is no risk of losing real money. Therefore, trading on a demo account is more like a casino, when you put the entire deposit in the hope of getting a big profit.

Yeah, the binance trading thing is actually doing great, it actually allows bots as well which is a marvel if you consider that many people do not really know how to use bots and they straight up start trading real money with it. I have seen a person lose $20k on the first minute of starting a bot once because they put in "sell everything to restart" button for some reason, there was that option in the bot that said "take everything to bitcoin" and it warns them twice before they can confirm and dude just clicked anyway, there are tons who do not read what they click.

If you start using bots on virtual trading first and learn how to use the bot, you could end up with actually learning how to use the bot and you could totally be a lot better when you go to real one.

Virtual trading can be great for tracking markets. Set a few crucial strategies to run based on actual market condition. Get notifications when things are happening if your confirmation is needed before you pull the trigger. Helpful if you cannot stare at charts all day.
Otherwise the key to effectively using demo/paper/virtual trading is to be consistently testing a strategy. Otherwise you are evaluating your discretion which as a beginner is not developed yet.

Binance allows you to trade using their platform and play with some amount but without losing your real money i mean they are offering
something like demo but in here you can experience real trading.

But we must lose first before we really appreciate the real trading,better use small amount to try trading and learn from
 our own mistakes and experiences.

If you are beginner in trading, than it is always better to start on demo account. This is just to see what to expect on real account. Real trading starts with real account, so if you are not sure about your skills, then start with low initial investment

You would really feel the thrill or excitement because you arent risking something and as said or mentioned which you would bet as much as you can because you do know that its just free or virtual money.
You know that you wont lose anything thats why learning wont really be that much compared when you are dealing with the real thing.Pros is that you can really make out a learning yet you can able to
know on what are the mechanics or how do things should be done or does work rather than getting live or using actual money on your first try thats why getting some demo wont really be that a bad idea
but real learning can really be found on the actual situation using actual or real money.

We had a similar topic in gambling discussion section, it was about gambling with free money or demo versions, or gambling with the real money! My stand is pretty clear on that, it's always better to do it with real money! Demo version is good for one thing only, to learn about the rules if you are complete newbies, but as soon as you learn the rules try with real money, with amount you can afford to lose of course. Why it's better, simply because you learn how to do it under the pressure! You don't have pressure while you do it for free, you can risk a lot, you don't care much about your amount, but with real money you are under the light and you know you need to give your best or you will fail and lose money, and you don't wish that to happen!

Virtual trading training is of help to some extend, specially to the person who never did any training.

However, for any real strategy development and understanding of the real market movements there's no way around it.

You have to play with real money and learn the invaluable lessons by losing some of that money, at first. So I do agree with you that virtual trading is only for fun but it doesn't really bring real value to your winnings.

The virtual account for trading is always a good option, this is where you test your ability as a trader and see how you will fare, trading is a serious thing because if not taken care you can easily loss money, the reason why virtual trading account is very important to learn with from the beginning unlike actual account where you can easily lose money for real because of limited knowledge.

I guess this topic has been a bit of a real head scratcher because in the same span of few hours there has been two topics about it. I mean this is actually not a new thing, practice trading has been around for over 10 years in the regular stock market and in crypto it has been around at least 4 years I know of, I don't know if it has been around even longer. So, why did people suddenly get interested in this? Not like it is a brand new thing that we should be excited about.

Anyway I hope that people would actually find an answer because I feel like I know my answer but maybe different people have different approaches? Some people may think of it one way and some people may think of it another way, I can't really say which one is correct, maybe even the results do change like that.

Demo ones are really doing a big change, I do hope that people would finally get back on the proper virtual trading, demo ones are not really making any change in your trading ability because most of them are actually based on another whole new market with people who use the demo market, that is what demo means, so in real trading bitcoin could be $20k while demo one could be $10k, there is really nothing that makes them work together.

On the other hand virtual is not like that, you buy and sell however you want and the virtual prices change with the real prices so you know if you had certain amount of money in real trading you would earn or lose that much money if you did those moves. I do not really care about the demo one, I prefer the virtual one because it is better.

For me the pros is that It's good to use when you want to know and learn a proper strategy that you will use in trading the coin, you can also know how to set a proper entry and stop loss when you need to trade. but you need to think that it's your real money because that where the cons comes in trading using demo money you won't even realize and just spend the money you won't experience the feeling of a loss.

That's why it's also good starting knowing the basics then start with real trading but using a small amount of money so you can realize the risk and experience having a loss or a gain.

Virtual trading or Demo Accounts are very useful to lift our trading skill but not our metal as traders. When you start trading with real money, that's where our mentality is tested, it's not easy to be consistent with profit targets as well as loss limits that we can bear.

The reason why you are not confident in trading in real life because you are scared about the risks.

Trading with real money can cause nervousness and fear and you lose focus when you perform a trade. While in a virtual trading, you are confident that you will lose nothing, you will only lose virtual money that is not yours. Sometimes, it is much better to practice in an actual trading so that you will know how it works and you will have an idea about what are the feelings that you might experience in the middle of the transactions.

Virtual trading are practice, but for me it is efficient to practice in real life so that you will also gain experience.

You seems not to understand the benefit of virtual trading for it way for new exchange user to learn about the importance of some tools on the exchange trading platform and it also a means for newbie trader to try out all what he has learn through article and video. So, i dont see what make trading with small amount better than virtual money trading if even the traders is not on budget.

For someone who already have experience in trading doesn't necessarily go to demo account because literally they are wasting their profits making opportunities so they should try their strategies with little money to make it more realistic.

I think it can be handy to familiarise yourself with the pure mechanics of trading. Beyond that in trading you live and die on the mastery of your own emotions and if there's no actual money on the line then virtual trading won't scratch the surface there.

I'd do virtual first just to make sure I wasn't making any obvious mistakes in executing trades. Then I'd switch to very, very modest amounts to see what happened.



Your small amount may turn into a large amount and then you get that experience for very little risk. Anyone diving straight in cold is likely to end up crippling themselves before they got started.

I have my doubts that even trading with a small amount of money is that beneficial because then we go back to square one to the problem of trading with a virtual trading account in which you are not going to care about your losses, it is obvious that trading with a small amount of money is better than trading with virtual money but if the amount of money is still small then even if you lose you're not going to be that affected by it.

It is only when you trade with enough capital that makes you feel nervous about losing it when you can truly experience what is trading for real and that means that one single mistake could be enough to destroy your account, then my opinion is that the most important skill to learn is how to manage your risk and limit your losses.

It is undeniably best for a beginner to use virtual trading to gain experience and relevant skills that will be very useful later on. But it seems to me that even an experienced trader will be able to use demo versions of a cryptocurrency exchange in order to work out their options for trading strategies to study their effectiveness.

Virtual or demo trading is just only for complete beginner not for mastering in crypto trading completely, demo account offers people to test their skills but the real ability of using their skills can be found only with their real money involved and more people losing means they are just taking it too easy.It is important to start from the scratch not with all the saving you had!

When you are doing virtual trading it depends on how you do that as well, if you are just doing it randomly and happen to hit few lucky trades and make a profit and move to the real one, you will be upset with losing a ton of money and thinking "why did I made so much profit in virtual one and lost in the real one", well the answer would be you were lucky in the virtual and you saw the reality in the actual one.

However if you really give throughout thought on each of your trades even on the virtual one and you actually study why you made a profit or why you made a loss and learn from them, that means you could potentially do the real one very well as well, that is why I believe virtual before actual is depending on how you end up using the virtual one.

When ever i hear virtual money I get confused, please what did op mean by virtual money?
It's obvious that virtual exist,but what we are considering in this topics here is trading, to trade require money to purchase the necessary cryptoccurrency needed for the trading such bitcoin, litecoin, etherum
If you don't have a specific  amount of money for trading,do not adventure into it because the lost might lead human to other pathway of life.
Because of the level of risk I find in it.

Of course, people will trade differently with real money. This is the main problem with trading on a demo account. On a demo account, you are not afraid of anything, even if you start out conservatively at first.
However, the picture changes when you start trading for real money, and it changes especially if you are good at first.
The way out of situation 2 is to trade on a small deposit, say $ 10 -50 $ -100, depending on your free funds, or abstract and take a demo account very seriously, which is much more difficult.

Making a mandatory demo before the real trading sounds good in the part of newbies but it can be bad from the company knowing that there are some traders just want to try or switch to other platform and this mandatory demo can be the hindrance to them because they know what to do and this can be bad for the company since they can possibly be avoided by traders. Making the demo an option will be more efficient.

I'm sure that people who want to try trading would make a research first before dealing with money, No one wants to lose a money right? So it is a common sense that aspiring trader would learn how to trade first and learn the fundamentals of it, It would be nice if platforms make a somekind of practice range for aspiring users.

I guess making it somewhat mandatory for people to learn with demo before trading the real stock could be an interesting way to incentivize newbie traders... Am not sure everyone will like this though.   You can be required to pass your demo trading before you are allowed to go beyond trading what you can afford to lose in real trading.
People could still be allowed to trade with real funds without going through demo (only with what they can afford to lose), until they learn how to trade, then graduate a bit to trading with higher amount.

Yeah it is true but still paper trading is important in order to get familiarize on what is going on in the cryptocurrency market. Actually, the people who are doing trading simulator or paper trading first are the people who have lessen mistakes in their real portfolio. The only cons that I only seeing in paper trading is the emotion where it is not real especially if your money is not involved. Actually, in real life trading; understanding our own emotions are very important because it plays vital role in making decisions that can help us to succeed in trading.

Do not quickly open trading account if you do not yet try a paper trading, it is not required but paper trading can change your trading journey. Maybe it can help you in order for you to master your skills and the strategies wherein you can use in your rea portfolio in order to make gains.

What must be remembered is that practicing trading using virtual trading does not guarantee that we will immediately
succeed when doing real life trading. But in my opinion the percentage of success of people using virtual trading is
greater than people who jump right in do real life trading. So I am one of those who support virtual trading.

In my country, it is advisable to use virtual trading first before risking the total investments, it is mainly in stocks market, sometimes it only focus on the familiarization of the brokers feature and possible price of the companies they wanted to buy. Those who really have zero knowledge in trading should be thankful that virtual tradings are available to be able to earn. I used it when I start in stock market but no in crypto since it's almost the same in use the difference is the companies and volatility is more in crypto. Those who are truly serious to learn and wants to avoid risk should use it.

The first thing that I do when I'll entry to the market I've known the direction of the market itself, it means, I am not gambling for my money. Regardless I get profit and lose at the end I will never regret it but I will just take it as my experience later.

The second thing that I always do is set the profit target and stop lose for my risk, I mean I must set the amount of money that I can afford to lose. The both strategy has led me to make my day trading always comfortable. And you have to know, demo account will never you aware when you trade, it's really different. So, if you have intention to start trading you may be good if you use real money.

i have thought of this before but if i have though of it why not others ? im not a trader either but for a real trader or to those who are starting , this step is not been skip by them but they priotize this  . they think of way of how to handle it  .

 my guess is that they start with real money and avoid virtual money when they are going to practice  , that sounds risky but its okay because they can benefit of it later on and they can recover what they have lost on thier practice's  .

Being familiar with a trading engine is better than not being familiar with it, wouldn't you agree ?

Now about the risk, that's true, so you should try to simulate it also.

For starters, do the virtual trading with the same amount you would use IRL. No sense in trading 10 BTC and 100K$ if in truth you will be trading 0.01BTC and 100$. That could have an impact on fees for example.

Then you could "risk" something else. Let's say there is something you should do but don't because it's a chore, promise to do it if you lose the money. Like exercising every day, or go see an old family member you don't really like, or something like that. Then there is an incentive to not lose, not take too much risk.

Just an idea.

Personally, I can say that when trading on a virtual platform, I got used to a little how to behave.

Virtual trading is just a way to familiarize yourself. It really isn't considered experience imo, especially since the one factor that most traders fear, "risk", isn't involved. Virtual trading could be simply said as something that let's you be used to how charts/markets/movements etc. work, and you being used to them means that you could understand a lot of things quickly compared to normal. Simply saying, it's like the visual form of a huge amounts of text, presented in an image form. It's like explaining the process of photosynthesis in all text form being presented once again in picture form, which let's you understand things a whole lot easier.

They don't put in effort in virtual trading, not their money, not their business so to speak. This is why they think of real trading as something similar, though it mostly just involves them lying to themselves that "this is easy, I was able to earn 100% profit in virtual trading in 2 days blah blah gibberish".

Losing a lot of money is a very stressful thing, so everybody should be more clever about it. Trading won't be compared as of gambling if you knew exactly the reality of the game, because skills and patience should be together. If you don't have that capability, you'll end up wasting huge amount of money. Becoming professional trader isn't easy, you need to work hard for it and never make the same mistakes again.

Yes, its really misleading when using up that Virtual trading word which is actually pertaining to demo trading.This actually can help out people or to those who do thrive to learn up.

It does have its cons when it comes to some aspects since you've been not dealing with actual money then seriousness of doing trades will really be not too present when you do make up some
trades since you do know that you arent risking something.

But having these features will really make you learn and able to grasp something which can really be so useful when you are already dealing with actual money.

Can easily be compared to virtual gambling.
Like playing poker in facebook where that money is just from another user who sent you gifts.

You play and gamble all the way without even thinking about it.
Why? It ain't real. That is the dark side of that.
I'd rather trade with a little amount. That way, I will still be careful because I am losing real money.

Virtual trading only provides experience for beginners who want to trade so that it is easier to understand what strategy to use, so that real funds will remain safe. Virtual trading is just a lesson before plunging into real trading.

When doing virtual trading, you always get profit, so when trading real you get a lot of losses. it all depends on psychology. In virtual trading, psychology will not play a lot because there is no real money.

The most important thing is how to regulate emotions in trading, even a professional will lose with unstable emotions and tend to choose the wrong choice.

Learning and trying there are some differences in it, if someone uses the virtual trading just to get familiar with the trading platforms means they are the one going to lose their money when they start playing with real money where as someone is learning from virtual trading with the same effort as real money involved which will enhance their trading when they go with real money.

Ofcourse.
Sometimes I think some sort of real rewards (maybe inform points, rankings, etc) on the "virtual trading" or demo could encourage people to stick to learning, and help them learn almost like they would on the real ones. The rewards should be useful afterwards, and not something that is useless to you after earning them.

Virtual trading is important especially if you are new in the market, you will lose huge amount of money if you started with high capital with a a little amount of knowledge. For those beginners who will try to use virtual trading, make sure that you will treat it as your real portfolio. One of the problems that I keep seeing is a lot of traders are not treating the virtual trading as their real port where are just buying and selling without understanding what is it for. The good things is there are now exchangers that are offering virtual trading or what they called trading simulator in order to fully develop your skills. We can gain a lot of experiences through virtual trading so we should master our strategies first in trading simulator before we put our hard earn money or savings in different exchanges in order for us to prevent huge losses.

Yup that’s right, I have seen people who try virtual trading and they are giving fake $10,000 to try out the virtual, and when they try the demo they will be succeeding, but once they decide to get into the real trading they will start losing.

It is just like that, and from what I understand, when they are into that virtual trading , most of them are just seeing it as a guess work and they just be hitting that buy and sell button and things are kicking in randomly and profit coming, and they think that’s how it’s going to be in the real trading.

Even if they experience loss in the demo trading, they don’t really feel it and don’t care to figure it out since it’s not real money, they are just having fun until they get into the real thing.

 Yeah, it's kinda misleading to use virtual trading because actual and demo trading are all virtual trading.
 
 Anyhow, demo trading though is kinda helpful because we tend to practice trading, we make some realizations and learning about the right reading of technical analysis before we are going to do some actual trades. But it's quite different when we trade in an actual field.
 We are trading in actual market volatility, we can see how whales are actually reacting in actual trading, we try to control the real fomo emotions, etc.
 
 On the other hand, though practice makes perfect. But actual trading experience is the best teacher to become a better trader

Yeah I just thought it was better to make it a little more explicit. I don't think it's mentioned very much that it's a good idea to move to a small amount of funds first and then start increasing.

Imo the balance you put on an exchange for trading with leverage shouldn't exceed 25-30% of your portfolio and if you lose it, you need to move back down.

I'd probably say the best option is to start at 1-5% then double it to 10, 20 and then 25 (or stick at 20) but only move up if 6/10 trades make a profit and your roi is still positive. It may seem tedious but you'll feel better afterwards than if you yolod with 30%.

I am a pro with virtual trading, especially for newbies who are new to the world of trading. Besides there is no risk,
because it doesn't use real money. Virtual trading makes our knowledge and abilities increase, this will be useful when
do real trading. I think cons people are just lazy to practice using virtual trading and find it unattractive if not using
real money. The conclusion is up to each person's decision, but I highly recommend using virtual trading.

I agree with you, that was the point of my thread to tell. I think it worth to get some experience with your bucks and this way you'll slowly adapt to higher bankroll. People usually directly move from virtual money to real high bankroll.



Good example from poker. In most cases people aren't prepared for worst-case scenario and all they hope and expect is bright future. Then, when they trade with their bankroll and in case they lose, they are afraid that this bright future may broke and want to fix it as soon as possible to make their wishes come true but this is the time when emotions rise significantly and in most cases, possibility of making their wishes come true is abandoned.

You may think that you are "emotionless" in trading but at the same time it depends on your subconscious. Maybe today and tomorrow you'll act like "emotionless" but your subconscious will act emotional and may change your behaviors. It's just logical reaction/instinct.

Reason is that they do become confident if they do really saw that they demo account had really been making profits but when they do already face up the reality then things do really changed.

You know that you are risking your own money and its really hard to control on what would be the emotions do come out and its just normal. Demo and Live is totally different

and you cant say that it would really be easy to kill off emotions since this one would be the main problem once you do make a switch up.It would be good if you do trade up with
real money but on a very small manner at least you do know and deal with the real thing without spending that much rather than doing demo and after that you do go all in
with trades just because you do saw that you do make big money with demo trades.

I would be against virtual/demo trading. I would just use them to get to know the features of the platform and get used to it. I would be relying on it to "learn how to trade".
Those are demo accounts and you know that. Hence, you even know that there isn't any risk of losing your money. So the trades you will be making won't matter to you.
But if you trade with real money/coins, trust me, you will be trading totally differently since this time "you will care about your coins". Again, you might build up some bad habits when trading in demo accounts.
I would rather start trading with small funds to gain real experience.

I would say that if the virtual one is like the stock market in the investopedia one, that would actually help, but if the virtual one is like the bitmex one where it is a whole new market I feel like it is not good.

So, if you have a market that basically mimicks the same prices as the real crypto prices and you just buy and sell from nobody but just get in an out from the game with no other person required, as in no liquidity or whatever required, I would say that could work, but if you make it like bitmex where there are other people who have to make the opposite deals from you in order to make it work like a real exchange, that market could do differently than the real market because everyone has fake money so they are more free and that is why results could be different.

This is basically my main problem with paper trading, without a doubt it is a great way to evaluate if your system works or not, it is also a great way to familiarize yourself with the platform that you are going to use to trade and without a doubt it will give you confidence that is necessary when you trade for real.

But the main issue is that you are not going to experiment the emotions that you will when you trade with real money and that is critical for your success, for example if the price of a coin begins to go down and your system tells you to sell because it has hit your stop loss you could be inclined to not sell your coins because you do not want to lose that trade, then you keep holding your coins thinking the market is going to turn around and follow your prediction only to discover too late that the price has crashed completely and your still holding your coins destroying your capital in the process.

Virtual or demo trading is just a platform create by exchange purposely for newbies or users to learn how to use some various features and to also be aware of the dangers in trading investment. However, it doesn't save the traders from losses because the vital thing a trader need is to know how to choose the right coin, have knowledge about the time to enter/exit the market.

Demo trading account will be good for training. There will be no pressure for you if you are just trying to experiment with an indicator that you are not used to. Its however very different when there is risk involve already like the real coins you have. Spot trading will just have the slightest risk.

The best that I did was to learn identifying the bottom in the weekly chart and start from there I guess there will be less risk in starting to trade from there and then move to a daily time frame.

Starting small will not guaranty you success because your whole attention will still be on the fright of losing the small capital. While going live trading is important to make success you must have to practice to on demo a lot time to master the act of trading. And you should not tie all your material expectations on your trading because it will cause you to make irrational calls which can lead to you losing more and more. It is good to free your mind and invest only cash you will not regret if you lose it.

Yeah first time I too got confused when op mentioned virtual money and not the demo account. But after going through other posts it seems they are talking about demo account.

This so called practice account shall be considered as real only when we start trading. For me strategy works well when we just limit the demo account to what we have in pocket actually. I mean there is no point in making million dollar demo account. One should just limit it to what we have really.

Then you can see how fast you drain your wallet and loose all the money if doing it in wrong way.

It's far better to work around it as real account only.

But it's good knowledge to share.

The idea of ​​doing virtual trading is not only to test the strategies, it is also to test the site and learn how to manage it so that there are no errors in the platform when real trading with real money is going to be done, in part it is to learn each usable tool of the Exchange.

I think the OP uses the world virtual because likes another world not close to reality.

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There are real pros and cons with the use of trading but still at the end of the day outcome is the most important to do.

Yes on trading you can use demo which gives you a lot of ideas what are the things you should do and gives you a lesson without losing any amount of money do you have but the problem is you are having a problem with the real-time experience, pressure and fear those at the common things you are missing out. But still, the goal is to have the knowledge to have proper trading skills.


Pinned this as a pros on trading strategy because this is the most essential thing why they have demo on their trading platform.

Yeah, there are various platform that offers a feature like that some called it testnet trading or just demo trading. Margin or futures trading right now has more risk than usual trading on spot so a practice might helps. Binance offers Testnet trading on futures, you can familiarize the interface and other stuff before trying the real one. Also, I find snapex have a demo accounts for beginners but if you are trying the real one try in your own risk. But trying the real one is so much different than the demo if you are risking real money it involves some emotions, etc.

Binance testnet trading: https://testnet.binancefuture.com/en/futuresng/BTC_USDT

I used some demos or practice platform to test my skill but to familiarize the markets and the tools and after that I immediately jump to trading with a small amount since I know from the very start that real trading and using virtual money is still different from the virtual money.

I am one of the people that always suggest people to make use of demo trading strictly to learn how to trade. Especially tools and features on trading platforms and their influence on their capital. I have seen situations where traders mistakenly sold a token far below trading price. This is because he did not know the types of order works. Emotion in trading is what you cannot take away. Even professional traders go emotional sometimes and it has an effect on the trading experience whether you are using demo or trading with your money 

Trading of crypto, stocks, and forex are being done virtually. To avoid confusion here, I assume what you meant about "virtual trading" is practice trading with a digital currency with no value. And real life trading means, engaging into a trading platform with digital currency that has an actual value.
Now, the purpose of practice trading is to let the newbie trader understand the functions, chart, and market movements. But, when you're trading in an actual trading platform, things would obviously be different because there is already a pressure, doubts, and fear that plays along your emotion that will challenge your risk tolerance.

I've said this a thousand times that nothing would ever teach us a good strategy in trading but our own experience.

That's just a matter of mindset/behavior. If it takes $30 for them to take something seriously, then that's on them, but why would you not test out your strategies in a risk-free playing field before experimenting with anything tangible?

If you can't test your 'emotional intelligence' with trades, then so be it: test your procedures instead.

I generally give a contrary advise to people. Virtual trading doesn't makes sense because trading actually isn't merely practicing your strategy but also practicing your emotional intelligence and patience along with it. Which you would never be able to do in virtual trading account because you have no emotion attached with that money. Instead I recommend people going in with small amount in real account. For example say $30-50. Generally you won't see any restriction on lot size in cryptocurrency so 30-50USD of amount is something you can learn trading with. Just adjust your portfolio accordingly. You will even get taste of real trading without burning yourself too much.

This makes some sense, but even without an incentive to do more research, virtual trading can be a safe measure of determining your aptitude if you do expend the same amount of effort trading as you would with a real balance.

Besides, you don't want to fall prey to your own cognitive biases and start gambling without knowing the odds.

There's the idea of "scared money" in poker. If you're playing with money that you're scared of losing, then you have already become attached to the bankroll that you're wagering. When you are making bets or trades, you are prepared for the worst-case scenario, otherwise you would not (or, for most people, should not) have performed the action.

That's one reason why some people like to hide their balance, so their behaviors are not influenced by any psychological factors during volatile swings.

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A lot of people get the whole "emotionless trading" schtick completely wrong: you aren't emotionless. Instead, you're risk-averse and seeking to maximize your expected gains. This means deducing conclusions through reliable processes, and not falling for any fallacious thinking that can negatively skew one's perspective.

I just skipped straight to using small amounts of funds.

I dumped ~1% of my portfolio at the time and started trading with 1-5% (~$1-5) amounts of that 1% to test how well I could do for profit, but I was also following signals, at the same time on a different account so I could keep track of sentiment and still make some sort of profit. I think I'd just have got bored of a demo account and 30 cents profit on a dollar isn't too bad of a win and the negative of that is a much nicer loss too.

Why used a word virtual trading, just used its demo account.

The reason because you doesn't care about the money and there is no psychology, emotion and other things by using demo account money. Successful or not you will not really care at all since that's just a demo account money. Ratter than using a demo account, better just make some TA on Trading View and always safe your TA work. Make some list and data for each month, how manny successfully analysis you make.

I think practice and observation your analysis with around 3-6 month already enough to you to start the trade with real money, try it first the smallest fund.

I see a lot of advice where people suggest each other to practice on websites where they can trade with virtual money. To be fair, I am in this list too among them but at the same time no one warns such people that it was it's pros and cons, more likely cons are outsiders while giving advices.

Pros: You trade with virtual money where your actions can't raise/damage your real budget, it looks like you spend money like nothing. This gives us possibility to test our skills and abilities in trading and help us further why we make mistakes and what we need to fix while considering the fact that the reason why I profit/lose is because you lose/profit.

Yeah, it sounds good but sometimes when we move on real life trading, things go wrong. We are always warned to leave our emotions outside while we are trading that includes: Not to panic sell, hold when there are harsh moments, etc. But we forget to mention another main emotion that we face in this situation: We trade with our money where we are responsible to results and these results may have huge impact on our life. Inside, in our subconscious, we worry about the results because we trade with our, real money.

To my mind that's one of the main reason why people usually start well with virtual trading and end up badly in real life trading and somehow this is one of the most skipped problem in overall.