TradingSim
Posted on December 19th, 2009
Written by Richard
Posted in: N/A (old archives)
I get several requests every month to feature new products and services here on the blog. It seems like every time, it’s a horrible idea or an over-priced service. Today, I think, is an exception. Check out www.tradingsim.com.
Basically, it gives you a minimal sim-trading “platform” right in your browser window (cross-platform: I just used it on my mac). You can look at a single NASDAQ stock at a time in minute charts, with a few indicators and drawing tools available. Then, similar to ninjatrader replay, you have play, pause, and fast forward buttons to control the action. They have 25 days of action on each symbol for you to practice against, and new data is available each night. The charts are intraday… this is for daytrading.
Here’s a picture just after I played for a gap close on a stock (click to enlarge):
You can see on the right-hand side that I made 6 bucks on this 100-share play (account balance starts at $50k). Sweet! :-) You can place market, limit, stop and stop limit orders. I haven’t played with it enough to know what I think of the realism of their fills. As long as you aren’t scalping the tops and bottoms of candles that shouldn’t be too much of an issue anyway. You get a level 1 and time-and-sales display.
The interface is attractive enough, though I wish I could customize the color of the charts (I like white backgrounds lately). Maybe I can, and I just haven’t found the option yet. The fast forward option seems to push price ahead by a minute at a time, and I’d rather actually just speed the data up a little bit (like I can in ninjatrader).
It’s new, and I’m hopeful that the rough edges will be worked out soon.
And the best part…
It’s free. Not even an ad. I emailed their co-founder basically saying “c’mon… you must have a plan to make money off this thing.” They say they aren’t in a hurry to do that, and would rather build up a user base and tune the service to what they want first.
Summary
When I’m sitting on the couch and my girlfriend is watching another one of her crime investigation shows, I’m likely to open my laptop and practice my price-reading skills with this. It’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s brand new and you can’t beat the price. Great for people that want to practice trading simple charts.
You could argue that ninja is free and has replay, but you still need to have ninja running all day to record the replay data, and have access to a live data feed, and run on a PC, etc. That’s enough of a hassle to stop beginners with day-jobs and/or no brokerage accounts in their tracks. With TradingSim, all you need is a web browser and determination to learn technical analysis.
TradingSim.com. Worth a look.
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© 2010 Richard Todd. I am not a financial advisor, and nothing on the site should be considered investment advice or actionable recommendations. I'm just an individual, saying what I think, and sharing my experiences.