I'm a pretty heavy user of trading sim, and there only seems to be a bit of scattered info on it in the forums so I thought I'd post a detailed thread here along with some recent improvements they've done. For those who don't know, TradingSim (www.tradingsim.com) is a dedicated replay paper trading platform that runs in the browser. One can choose any date, setup a watchlist and playback stock data. There are buttons for play, pause, step to next candle, speed up, slow down etc. You can set your account size, buy, sell, short, limit and stop orders are all there. The advantages of using such a platform: Trade outside of market hours Drastically increase the amount of practice trading for a given time of day (for instance the open) Trade in different market conditions Use it as a research tool to study historical data, refine patterns and strategies, etc. One of the main drawbacks that people have commented here on the forums here is that it does not have pre-market and post market. They have since added this a little while ago. I'd say the only key thing that's still missing is level 2, although they do have order flow; and that also shows the current spread. There is obviously no premarket gapper scanner or anything like that. For trading practice I simply look up the respective recap from Andrew on youtube in order to get a watchlist. I spent quite some effort getting this das-like, and I'm relatively happy with the result. Take a look for yourself, and note that my DAS setup is slightly different than Andrews (I use green candles, different thickness MAs). Like DAS, there are a lot of options, it takes a little while to find everything you need. One rather critical option that vastly improved it for me was the 'Scale series only' under the 'Scale' of the chart settings. This stops the chart zooming out to fit the 50 and 200 SMA when they are out of screen. Just like DAS you can mark your charts with relevant levels from the premaket or daily, levels can be moved across charts via one by one via a copy-paste type functionality, but given the amount of clicking involved it's just as fast to draw them again. Some of the drawbacks the platform still has: Calculation of the VWAP in the pre-market is incorrect (I am currently in contact with them about this) No level 2 Hotkey functionality is a bit weak compared to DAS For active trades, it shows your average price on the chart, as well as relevant limit/stop orders, which is pretty cool, however once a trade is closed, there are no triangles to show you your orders. This makes it difficult for reviewing trades. This also facilitates overtrading or scaling out too quickly in my mind as you can't see the array of triangles you are leaving behind. During my usage of the platform I have found some bugs or oddities and sent them feedback. They have been fairly responsive about addressing all the feedback I have sent them, and a number of things have been fixed thus far. A word to pricing and competition. I tried both NinjaTrader and ThinkorSwin in the beginning, both of which are free. Ninja trader didn't work at all, replay only seemed to work for futures and forex. ThinkorSwim is also free but requires an ameritrade TD account. Based on feedback I heard from others from the community that it was rather clunky and not really usable, I didn't bother trying it out. TradingSim is $300 a year, and they offer a 10 day trial. Compared to the cost of DAS I personally think this is totally reasonable, particularly for people with jobs, or in other time zones who need to practice out of market hours. To conclude I want to emphasize that whilst I am happy with using this software, it is clearly no replacement for the DAS trader simulator with real time data and participating in the chat. Personally, I find I take tradingsim less seriously than the DAS sim, something about the fact the things are not happening real time really takes the pressure off. Therefore it is essential to participate in the market daily to practice in realtime market conditions, and on the platform you will go live with. I'd be interested to here from other members using tradingsim and what they think. Anything to add or any questions?

I uncovered some sort of bug in DAS that lets you add new rows to a watch list without having to use the right-click menu. It can save time depending on how fast your keyboard skills are. Here's a GIF of the steps: I normally do this first thing every morning to quickly add 20 rows before building my watch list.

Went live Monday of this week after paper trading since March. Had 2 red days for tiny losses, but did really well today. Trading in tiny share sizes to start with, and will increase slowly if I keep being consistently profitable. Switched to per-share pricing structure today which will save me a ton. I only traded 1000 shares total today, so that's an important change. I'm also starting at a default 100 shares, but I drop to 50 for high price or volatile stocks (like NVDA and SQ today). If I average a positive amount after 5 days, I'll go to a default of 200 shares. If I average a negative amount after 5 days, I'll go back to the simulator until I have 5 days green average again. I'm actually having a lot of fun doing this.

Hi @Mike B... "not blowing up my account" is a negative goal, how you think about your goals can influence how you feel about it, and whether you achieve it. "Not blowing up my account" could mean you are trading with a fear to lose mindset, and it not necessarily means to grow your account or become a profitable or consistent trader. Some people says that negative goals don't work because is not the way our brains are wired to work. For instance, "don't think of an elephant" ...You weren't thinking of one before, but now that you've been told not to it's impossible not to. Negative goals like: I will quit smoking, I will not eat as much, I won't spend so much money, etc. are almost never attained, your mind visualizes yourself smoking, eating, and spending, and that's what you end up doing. I remember once in a flight they announced "Remember NOT to forget your belongings"... I almost left my stuff in the plane... (Remember ___ to forget) Instead you need positive goals, goals where the image is of what you do want to achieve: I enjoy breathing fresh air, I will eat small healthy meals, I will save my money for …, etc. Goals in general work this way. You must visualize the goal and your mind will do whatever it can to achieve it. If you want to become a profitable or consistent as trader you have to tell your brain what do you want to achieve. Maybe you want to reframe this goal so that it sends a positive and clear direction to your brain: "Increase my account X% or X$$ daily" and it will do whatever it takes to achieve it...