ways to practice / backtest trading strategies?

Hi, all,

I am a newbie to Forex, trying to practice my strategies, I can think following 3 ways to practice

1.use forex tick data to practice
Question:
Where do I get the relatively cheap forex history tick by tick data?
Which software or system I can dump the data to practice?

2. use Demo account to practice
Question:
Which broker can provide decent demo account?

3. use simulation software to practice
Question:
Can simulation show realistic trading situations?
What are most commonly used simulation systems?

So, what are the pros and cons of above system?

How do you guys generally backtest your strategies or trading ideas?


Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

Any MetaTrader broker offers all these 3 ways . You can download tick data (OK, not tick, but M1) in it, you can use it for demo and you can test strategies in MetaTrader.

Then what are the pros and cons of above ways of practicing?

1. Using Forex tick data to practice isn't very productive in my opinion. It's hard to trade based solely on the quotes' changes.

2. Trading on demo is almost the same as trading on real account, but you should keep in mind that execution may be worse on real account and if your system isn't fully automated take into account that the emotions are 100 time stronger on real. Trading on demo is the best way to test strategies but it's also the slowest.

3. Backtesting is good for optimization and fast testing of the strategies. It's fast, but it's not very accurate and you'll have to have a trading system completely automated to backtest it.

Yes they can show realistic trading, but with the different psychology


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