TradingSim

[Ross K 12]

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?

Edited October 24, 2018 by Ross K

[Norman 0]

Thanks for the review Ross, very helpful. 

One question: let's say I was observing a one minute chart in real time playback mode. Would a single one minute candle rise and fall (ie. show the struggle between buyers and sellers) as if you were viewing the same chart in DAS while trading live? And would the growth of a volume bar also match what you'd see in DAS? What I'm looking for is a realistic simulation of price (and volume) action. In your opinion, how does it compare to DAS in that respect?
  
I'll probably check this out myself with the free trial but the thought I'd start by asking you and get the information out there for interested members.

[Robert H 453]

3 hours ago, Norman said:

Thanks for the review Ross, very helpful. 

One question: let's say I was observing a one minute chart in real time playback mode. Would a single one minute candle rise and fall (ie. show the struggle between buyers and sellers) as if you were viewing the same chart in DAS while trading live? And would the growth of a volume bar also match what you'd see in DAS? What I'm looking for is a realistic simulation of price (and volume) action. In your opinion, how does it compare to DAS in that respect?
  
I'll probably check this out myself with the free trial but the thought I'd start by asking you and get the information out there for interested members.

Yes, the price action is live and is based on historical time and sales. The candles will pulsate and the volume bars increase just like in DAS. I recommend you sign up for the free trial and take it for a test drive.

[Ross K 12]

21 hours ago, Norman said:

Thanks for the review Ross, very helpful. 

One question: let's say I was observing a one minute chart in real time playback mode. Would a single one minute candle rise and fall (ie. show the struggle between buyers and sellers) as if you were viewing the same chart in DAS while trading live? And would the growth of a volume bar also match what you'd see in DAS? What I'm looking for is a realistic simulation of price (and volume) action. In your opinion, how does it compare to DAS in that respect?
  
I'll probably check this out myself with the free trial but the thought I'd start by asking you and get the information out there for interested members.

As Robert answered it does.  From comparing the price action movements on the chart as well as the time/sales flow it seems that it doesn't seem to move quite as smoothly as in DAS.  DAS seems to be a bit more responsive to price action movements.  However as far as I'm concerned it's negligible and doesn't affect my trading decisions. As for the accuracy of the movements I cannot vouch for that, I never compared that.  You would need to desktop record some DAS price action and compare to tradersim.

Edited December 30, 2018 by Ross K

[Norman 0]

Thanks for your responses. I'm trying the free trial and it's not as smooth as DAS but does the job. As for accuracy, I'm assuming it's fine given it's using historical tick data. 

 

[ManuelPDL 2]

I am finding a major problem - horizontal line levels set on Daily are not shown for other timeframes or linked charts - is there a workaround I am not aware of?

[Ross K 12]

If you use the same chart and change the time frame, your levels should be there.  However the levels are not linked across different charts   You can copy them across individually with ctrl-c ctrl-v, but you can only do one at a time.  This is so clunky I found it equally fast to just mark the same level again.

You could ask them for this by clicking the provide feedback, or just sending them an email directly.

Edited January 6, 2019 by Ross K

[Benjamin 0]

Thank you for the review. Can you elaborate more on shortcomings of the hotkey? What is the problem with hotkey functionality of Tradingsim?

Thanks

[Robert H 453]

On 1/21/2019 at 1:22 PM, Benjamin said:

Thank you for the review. Can you elaborate more on shortcomings of the hotkey? What is the problem with hotkey functionality of Tradingsim?

Thanks

There is no customization. Your only option to assign hotkeys to the following commands:

I don't use the hotkeys--I use the BUY/SELL buttons on the right.

[Ross K 12]

That's not quite right.  You can click on the buttons and it brings up a dialog to re-assign them.

I think this is something that they have improved since I started using it.  I remember having difficulties getting keybindings with modifiers (shift, ctrl etc) to work properly, however it seems to be working just fine now.  Nevertheless, it is running in the browser, so you can to take care that your bindings do not interfere with browser shortcuts or any browser plugins.

I got used to using it in the beginning without hotkeys, using the buy/sell buttons on the right, so I just kept using it like that.  However I no longer see any reason why you can't closely match your DAS bindings in tradingsim.

[Robert H 453]

Sorry, I meant that you can't create new hotkeys/commands such as "sell 1/3". I only see the option to reassign the bindings for a preset list of existing commands.

@Ross K perhaps I'm mistaken? Thanks! 

[Ross K 12]

Sorry @Robert H, you are totally right there.  You can't specify shortcuts with specific amounts to buy/sell, nor any other custom commands available in DAS.

I was just reading about how they add new features to the platform, they said that they are reluctant to add new features, preferring to limit the options available in order to simplify the user experience.  I guess this makes sense for beginners and people coming from various other platforms.  However it likely means they won't add something like this.  Perhaps only if enough people request it.

https://tradingsim.com/feature-tour/new-features/

[Brandon K 64]

I used TradingSim for a year and just recently decided (in January) not to reup my subscription. Big reason at the time was the lack of pre-market data and now the lack of VWAP calculation with pre-market data. I ended up not using the platform as much because of that reason. I also didn't like the lack of ability to create multiple layouts. When I trade at my office, I have multiple monitors to use. However, when I get home, I only have one monitor and the layout is still set to multiple monitors. I asked about that feature months ago along with the VWAP calculation and it never got added. Tradingsim is the closest thing to DAS we have (for replay anyway). I tried ToS, but the tick speed of the candles were odd and didn't feel realistic. If Tradingsim can fix the VWAP calculation with pre-market data, I'd consider it again 100%. I wasn't too upset about the hotkeys and lack of entry/exit indicators along with the levels. However, I do feel like those features shouldn't be hard to add or take this long to patch.

Edited February 7, 2019 by Brandon King

[Brandon K 64]

@Ross K, did support give you a time frame when they would be patching the VWAP calculation with pre-market data? When I asked, I was only told it was a bug and never got a date on when it would be fixed.

[Ross K 12]

Yeah, this VWAP pre-market bug is really frustrating, because imo it should be a quick fix.  I'm pretty sure I know exactly what the problem is, the VWAP is an accumulative average, summing all price and volume throughout the day, meaning it becomes progressively less reactive to price changes throughout the day.  DAS resets the VWAP calculation at midnight, whereas tradingsim resets it at 9.30am.  This means their VWAP won't respond to premarket changes, as it has the whole previous day 'fighting' against the premarket price action.

They asked me to clarify the bug when I emailed them, and I explained all this, and they didn't fix it.  This was around about the time I started this thread.  I am going to follow back up with them about this.