Demo account

Almost every broker offers a demo account. You get a balance of virtual money and access to the same platform as live clients, so you can place trades, set orders and watch profit and loss change in real time.

What a demo is good for

• Learning the platform: order tickets, stop-loss and take-profit orders, closing part of a position, reading the account summary.
• Seeing how leverage, margin and lot sizes translate into money.
• Practising a written plan for a set number of trades and recording the results.

What a demo hides

• Emotion. Losing virtual money does not feel like losing real money, so discipline in demo does not guarantee discipline live.
• Execution. Demo fills may be cleaner than live fills, with less slippage and fewer rejections.
• Account size. Many demos start with a large default balance; trading 100,000 virtual dollars teaches the wrong position sizes if you plan to fund 2,000.

Worked example

Set the demo balance to match what you would actually deposit, say 2,000 euros, and risk 1% per trade (20 euros). If your stop is 25 pips away on EUR/USD, that means 0.08 lots, not the 1 lot the platform may suggest by default. Use the position size calculator to check.

Practical note

Some demo accounts expire after a set period. A demo is a training tool, not proof that a strategy works with real money. See demo account to live trading.