Free trading simulator: how to really learn

What a trading simulator is

A trading simulator is a program that lets you make fake trades with fake money. You open a position, set a stop, close it, watch the balance change. No euro leaves your account, because the account does not exist: it is virtual capital.

In everyday language people use different words for the same idea: simulator, demo account, paper trading. Most of the time they mean the same tool. If you want the broader version, we wrote the guide to the free demo trading account.

Are a simulator and a demo account the same thing?

Almost. The real difference is in the prices. A demo account tied to a platform usually uses the real market prices, in real time. Some simulators instead let you replay past data, maybe a year of chart in a few minutes, and that changes what you can learn from them.

• Real-time prices: it trains you to wait, to decide with the chart really moving and to live with the days when nothing happens.
• Fast-forwarded historical data: they show you many different situations quickly, but you already know the period, and the temptation to remember how it went is strong.

Neither is better in absolute terms. Beginners need the first one most, because real trading happens in real time.

What a simulator teaches you

1. How a platform works, where the orders are, how to set a stop, what it means to close only part of a position.
2. How to work out the size of a trade starting from how much you are willing to lose.
3. Whether your method holds up over twenty, thirty, fifty trades, and not just one lucky one.
4. How you react to bad streaks, when three losses in a row make you want to change everything.

For the second point you can use our position size calculator, which is free. For the fourth it is worth reading what drawdown is, because a bad streak in a simulator is normal and prepares you for the real one.

What a simulator does not teach you

The hard part of trading is emotional, and that is where the simulator is weakest. With fake money fear weighs little: you keep a stop without anxiety, you let a gain run without sweating, you accept a loss without anger. With real money the same choices get harder, which is why results in a simulator are almost always better than the ones that come after.

There is also a second limit, a more technical one. In a simulator the order is almost always filled at the price you see. In the real market it can go differently. The gap between the expected price and the one you get is called slippage, and it shows up mostly when the price moves fast or the coin has little trading volume. Spread and commissions, too, are sometimes missing or simplified in a simulator. If you find a tool that accounts for them, pick that one.

How to choose a simulator

A few questions are enough. Are the prices real and in real time? Are there commissions and spread, or is the cost zero? Can you set a stop and choose the order type as you would on the real platform? Can you export the list of trades to build your journal? And does it last long enough: some demo accounts expire after a few weeks, others stay open with no time limit.

How to use it to really learn

There is only one rule: treat it as if it were real. The rest follows from it.

1. Set the capital you would really use. Not a hundred thousand euros if in reality you would put in a thousand.
2. Risk the same small share of the account every time, for example 1%, and write down the stop before you enter.
3. Keep a journal. Why you entered, where the stop was, how it ended, what you would change.
4. Give the test a minimum number of trades, for example fifty, before judging it. With five trades luck weighs more than the method.
5. Do not change the rules halfway. If you want to try another one, start again with a new journal.

How long is enough is a question of its own, and we dedicated an article to it: how long to use a demo account. And when you feel ready, there is the guide to moving from demo to a real account. If you are starting from zero, the main guide is trading online: what it is and how to start consciously.

The mistakes people make most often in a simulator

The first is playing with an unrealistic amount. With a hundred thousand virtual euros it comes naturally to open huge positions, and when you move to real money you no longer know what it means to risk an amount you can feel. The second is opening one position after another for fun, with no written reason: after a month you have plenty of trades and no lesson. The third is stopping at the first lucky streak. Three wins in a row in a simulator say nothing about a method, only that the market went along with you for a few days.

A simple way to avoid them is to fix the rules before you start and look at the results only after a number of trades decided in advance, not whenever you feel like it.

The STA simulator: the DEMO

The STA DEMO is free forever. It uses virtual capital and real prices, and it receives the same cards as people using STA with real money, with entry, stop and target already set by ten agents who argue it out in the debate between Bull and Bear. So you are not trying to guess your own trades: you watch how a written method behaves on today's market, with its stops and its losses. The history of the cards is public and verifiable on GitHub, and you can compare it with what you see in your account.

The DEMO is not a promise of what will happen with real money, and trading involves a high level of risk. It is a place to learn at your own pace.

Frequently asked questions

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Trading crypto-assets involves a high risk, including the total loss of the capital used. Numerical examples are for illustration.