Newbie Here

Hello,

I'm looking for a site where I can "paper trade" the S&P 500 and see if I can have some success, before I put out any $$$$$. I don't mind paying for the service, but I'd like to have it in "real time."

Thanks much!

Welcome to the forum dhar2112. Your best bet is to find an online broker. You can try Emini Direct and you can probably use something like Ninja trader as your trading platform. You might have to open an account with a minimum balance but it won't cost you anything if you decided not to trade after you've finished paper trading. You could also paper trade through a charting platform such as eSignal (free trial) which would give you the benefit of have the trading and charting together in one package. One of the things that you can also do with eSignal (and probably other charting packages) is the replay the day at any speed and practice trading which is pretty good.

E su=ignal does not have a free trial they have a RISK free trial which entails paying for it than if you do not like the service you can get a rebate. I feek there ads are misleading Printer

Printer, did you try through the link above? I was under the impression that it was free (except exchange fees) for the first month. You might have gone another route which was a risk free trial. I was sure that it was free for the first month and not risk free.

Good luck

you'll need it. People always like to trade the mkts where they can lose their money the quickest....I sure did and lots of it..that was then this is now.

I would have made a killing easier in another way of trading-which I do now- and there would have been no need to daytrade....but now that I got good after 5,000 real time hours..not paper trade hours....

Hey, I got a real good idea...Send me $10 grand now and I'll teach you..money back guarantee..YOU can trust me..I'm on Paltalk, hotcomm etc...that sounds like a plan.

I would not start with trading or paper trading/daytrading s&p or any financial indicies..but if you want there is a lot of info...just load up your paypal account...cuz you going to get so confused...but hey who am I to tell you how to lose your money.

Anyway...good luck my friend.

Before anyone misreads what pips2007 is saying and starts a heated discussion I'd like to point out that his offer is sarcastic and not intended to be taken seriously.

As DT point's out, Ninja has a very good simulator, I think you can run it with an open tick feed if you want to bypass the broker starting out.

Although I am not a fan of 'paper trading', it is better than diving into the deep end of the pool of live trading and losing your working capital while you discover what your actual level of trading skill is.

I suggest you stay on the simulator until your consistently profitable on a weekly basis.

Keep in mind however, when you come off the simulator, it can be very difficult to equal your paper trading results in live trading.

I agree with Pattern Trader's sentiment on paper trading. A necessary evil. Try and simulate the pain of loosing and winning by rewarding and punishing yourself after each trading session in a manner that incentivizes you to treat the simulated trading like real trading.

tks daytrading..yes my sarcasicm is a bit of humour....make you think about it a bit before you act.

Yes paper trading is important, but imho only after you know how to read a chart.

Newbie if I was you I would start trading options on commodities or stocks before venturing to daytrading...you make real good money easier on commodities and at least you making money. So in mean time when you doing commoditiy options...you can look at ES and YM chart...ER later..dont start on that.

Look at charts longer than 25 minutes and when see how they ebb and flow. Spend your time looking at charts...no need to paper trade. Do this for 6 months and buy no courses and of course no real trading. Spend over 1,000 hours and you will learn something about charts. Spend over 5,000 hours and you should have got it...

After 6 months start paper trading...during this time from going to forums, scam sites, etc you should have weeded out most of the scammers and determined a chat caller person who you like.Stay away from fibs, rsi, macd, moving average bollocks and all the same old same courses. They all bs and every joe using it....

Its always better to take calls than pay for courses....as long as you find a decent person. But stay away from everyone at Pal...except Twaves..Steve Tetres...2 week free...$125.00 a month. He decent chap...good trader..but trades a lot..you will get stopped out, but you will make profit there. I don't use him as I trade less and try to get the 6-10 pts a day. But I was there in Feb 07...stay away from the rest at Pal. There may be some at Hotcomm or else. However, if a guy cant tell you to short or long at a price before hand and tell you where it going...then stay away....Like hunterone..amateurish...

So there you are ...a game plan...of course you can chuck it and go on your merry way...

Just a caution...most people are too hurried to make money only to end up losing it fast. Its better to hurry and save your money.

Good luck

Not sure I can agree that Fibs are bs...

DHARR - try infinity brokers. they have a good RT SIMM. I use it. The only problem; you can't have the SIMM loaded on the same PC as your account trading platform. (i have no idea why).
I have a futures account, and use their SIMM to papertrade. Just getting back into RT trading after using IB for futures. Anyway; I have not traded with cash yet and they have let me use SIMM for 2 months free; I'll deposite cash and then trade RT after I'm ready; and they still let me use it. I have to change UserName -PW monthly though. They don't want the whole world using it.
call and see if u can use it.

http://www.infinityfutures.com/onlinetrading.aspx
Infinity Brokerage Services and ProEdgeFX
111 W. Jackson Blvd. Suite 2010
Chicago, IL 60604


GL
KJAX

quote:

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Originally posted by dt_wannabe

Thank you for the advice pt_emini.

I started out with IB's demo program (which supposedly uses last week's market data) to now paper trading real time with Ninja Trader w/ a Zen Fire feed.

Since my strategy (so far) has been scalping for 1 pt on the ES, I guess my next question is this: how do the paper-trading fills compare with real-trading fills?

I've read that this is an issue (i.e. its much easier to get an order in when your paper-trading than it is with real-trading).

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With the Ninja simulator the ES fills are very conservative. Thus your live trades should be able to replicate your fills with reasonable correlation to your simulator results. I agree with DT's comment that the simulator is conservative and you may find fills a touch easier than the Ninja simulator is giving you presently.