Paper Trade 150+ Assets

How the practice trading desk works

The trading desk is where simulated orders are placed. You choose an instrument, choose a side, choose a size, and the order is filled against the simulator's current price. The fill, the position and the resulting profit or loss are all recorded in your practice portfolio, which is stored in your own browser rather than on a server.

Two order types are supported today: market orders, which fill immediately at the shown price, and limit orders, which rest until the simulated price reaches your level. Position sizing is entirely up to you, which is deliberate — learning to size a position is one of the few skills a simulator can teach almost as well as a live account.

What to practise on the desk

• Fixed-fraction sizing: risk the same small percentage of the balance on every trade and see how the equity curve smooths out.
• Stop discipline: decide the exit before entering, then check in the journal whether you actually honoured it.
• Order-type behaviour: compare how a market order and a limit order behave on a fast-moving instrument.
• Concentration: run a week with five positions and a week with one, and compare the drawdown.

Limits of any simulator

A simulator cannot reproduce slippage on illiquid instruments, brokerage fees, overnight financing, tax, or the specific emotional weight of losing money you actually need. Treat practice results as evidence about your process, not as a forecast of live returns. Past simulated performance does not predict future real-world performance.

Order types, and when each one matters

• Market order: fills immediately at the shown simulated price. Simple, but in a fast market the price you see is not always the price you get — in real trading this gap is called slippage.
• Limit order: only fills at your price or better. It protects the entry price but may never fill at all, which is itself a lesson worth learning on practice capital.
• Closing a position: selling what you hold, or buying back a short. The realised result lands in the portfolio history for review.

A practice routine that actually builds skill

Trade less than you think you should. A beginner placing thirty trades a day learns nothing except how to click; a beginner placing three trades a week with a written thesis and a written exit learns something from every one of them.

Every session should end with the same three questions written down: did I size this the way I said I would, did I exit where I said I would, and would I take this trade again knowing only what I knew at entry? Answering those honestly over a few months does more for results than any indicator.