When do the results of demo trading become reliable ?

Hello,

When someone demo-trades for a while, when exactly or after how many trades could he determine whether he could be profitable in a live account or not ?

I know how a winning streak ocould have a bad effect on a novice trader, so I want to know when it's safe to say that going live would be a good idea. btw I have blown a micro account already due to the fore-mentioned effect and I'm back to demo so that's why I'm asking.

MT.

This is the timeline that I've developed as a result of all the reading I've done on FF: http://makingaforextrader.blogspot.c...tarted-in.html

You can cut down on some of this time if you have an EA and can back-test it. In that case, the three months of play-money trading can be cut down.

3 consecutively profitable months would be a minimum. So 2 months profitable then a losing month you start again.
It'll focus your mind if you're disciplined.
If you're trading longer term charts you might want longer but 4-hr to daily you should have enough trades to sense if you're on the right track.
If you go live and have two consecutive losing months go back to demo, iron out your problems and start the 3-month cycle again.

that was quick ! thank you both very much, @LongToBeFree : I've checked your blog before, congratulations; it's nice and informative.

My take is a bit different. Trade w/ a demo until you understand which buttons to click and what they do. Then open a live acct and trade less than .005% per trade for 1000 trades. By the time you finish you will have some idea of how to trade. But more importantly - you'll have some idea of how you react to your trading.

Forget this time line for the next stage stuff; you'll just end up kicking yourself when you miss the time line.
This is a long term journey. In 3 or 4 yrs, if your still trading you'll understand a hell of a lot more about yourself than you do now. That is the real journey.
You might even make some money - that is the bonus
Good Trading to you.

The results of demo trading become reliable when you can do all that your trading plan requires you to do pretty much flawlessly. You need to be confident in the trades your making as your making them.

If your looking for a time-span of profitable trading before going live then its totaly dependent on how many trades you take using your desired timeframe, the more trades sampled the more valuable the info is.

Personally, I know traders who could gage if they could be profitable with a weeks worth of market data easily. If you trade the daily chart then a month is hardly enough time to make any proper judgements on your trading.

Leon