Demo accounts are an excellent approach to getting trading experience. Beginners should begin trading on a demo account to familiarise themselves with their trading platform, various market orders, and market dynamics. However, semi-experienced traders are more likely to benefit from trading with a micro account, as demo trading does not accurately reflect real trading. Open a micro account with $100 or less. This article will describe a demo account.
What is a Demo Account?
A demo account allows you to trade in a realistic environment without risking your funds. When you open a demo account with a Forex broker, you’ll get virtual money that you can use to demo-trade, practise your trading skills, get used to the broker’s trading platform, and learn about the fast-paced world of financial markets for the first time. If you have never traded before, you should open a demo account to become familiar with the various types of market orders, timeframes, how news affects exchange rates, and how to use all the features of your trading platform. Almost all brokers offer demo accounts that allow Forex traders to practise trading without risk. Demo accounts typically include $10,000 or $100,000 in virtual currency that can be used to practise trading on the Forex market without the risk of losing real money.
But this is also one of the biggest problems with demo accounts since traders don’t care about their demo funds.
Even though demo accounts are similar to real trading environments in many ways, you still need to know a few small things.
- No Slippage and Re-Quotes: Since demo accounts don’t have access to the real interbank market, placing a trade on a demo account won’t cause delays or re-quotes. On real trading accounts, re-quotes happen often but rarely on demo accounts. If the market is moving quickly and your broker can’t fill your order at the price you asked for, they’ll re-quote it and ask you to confirm the new price. In the same way, slippages are the difference between the price at which your order is executed and the price you set in your market order. When slippage happens in the market, your order is usually filled at a worse price. Since re-quotes and slippage depend on how well your broker can execute your trade on the interbank market, they often happen on real trading accounts but not demo accounts.
- Spreads are different: Demo accounts are supposed to be the same as real accounts regarding exchange rates, but sometimes they don’t work that way. The bid and ask prices can differ between a demo account and a real account. Spreads change in real trading accounts based on how buyers and sellers work together, but they are often fixed in demo accounts. When you open a trade in a real trading account when the market is very volatile like right after an important news report, spreads may widen, which will make your trading costs go up.