Best Stock Market Simulator for 2023 – Top 5
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Stock market simulators make it easy for day traders, swing traders and investors to practice trading and investing without risking real money by using trading platforms with real-time market data but virtual money.
For the best possible user experience, those platforms are as realistic as the real ones. The main benefit of using a stock market simulator is that you can try all functionalities risk-free (order tickets, order types, stock charts, etc.) and make your first steps without risk.
Below I have listed my 5 favorite simulators for practice trading and investing in the stock market.
Top Stock Market Simulators of 2023
- Trade Ideas – Best Day Trading Simulator
- Interactive Brokers – Best Broker Stock Simulator
- Seeking Alpha – Best Investing Simulator
- Stock Rover – Best Investment Projection
- TradingSim – Best Stock Market Simulator
1. Trade Ideas
Trade Ideas is the most powerful day trading simulator that combines real-time stock scanning, AI-driven trade alerts, automated trading capabilities and order routing to the integrated trading simulator or to the paper accounts of connected online brokers like Interactive Brokers and E*Trade.
Trade Ideas is the most complete day trading tool available. Besides extensive day trading scanner capabilities, it comes with backtesting features, a free trader chat room, weekly educational events, and over 500 trade alerts and filters. About 20 pre-configured screeners are available, and traders can design and code their own scans.
The Trade Ideas stock market simulator fully integrates into the platform, and no additional subscriptions are needed, no broker, no exchange fees, just the Trade Ideas Standard or Premium access is necessary.
Costs: Access to the Premium version of Trade Ideas costs $167 per month when paid annually and $228 on the monthly plan. The cheaper Standard plan also comes with real-time simulated trading, costing $84 per month when paid annually and $118 monthly.
Best Trade Ideas Offer: 15% discount on all subscriptions with coupon code DAYTRADINGZ
2. Interactive Brokers
Interactive Brokers is the best direct-market access broker for day traders who directly integrates with a fully functional simulated trading account. As a customer, you get two login credentials, one for the live trading account and one for a trading simulator account. When you log in to the simulator, the full TraderWorkstation platform looks like the live one, and all functionalities are the same. You can use the same order routing functionalities, tools, and features.
Interactive Brokers also has the best brokerage API and supports excellent stock charting apps, and stock screeners like Trade Ideas. You can even connect your proprietary coded automated trading software to it.
Costs: You need to open an account with Interactive Brokers to use the trading simulator, but the good news is that IB charges $0 for deposits, and the minimum deposit is also $0.
3. Seeking Alpha
Within Seeking Alpha, you can create portfolios to stay informed about the stocks you are interested in. This includes recent stock prices, changes, traded volume, and after-hours market data with the free version. Seeking Alpha Premium adds insights to analyst ratings, up/downgrades, email alerts and push notification.
You can also use the free stock research website to get a market overview with key market data and insights into bonds, commodities, currencies, dividends and much more. For analysis, type the stock symbol, company names or keywords in the search bar at the top and work from there.
The great thing about Seeking Alpha is that you can use multiple portfolios to test different scenarios and strategies. Log in to My Portfolio, click Create New Portfolio and add all assets (stocks, ETFs, etc.) to the portfolio of your choice. Now you have a great stock market simulator in place that automatically tracks the performance of each portfolio you created.
For convenience, give every portfolio a clear name, e.g., “01 Breakout Strategy Portfolio”, 02 Buy at Pullback Portfolio,” etc.
Costs: Seeking Alpha Premium costs $239/year.
Best Offer: 25% Off and a 30-day free trial
4. Stock Rover
Stock Rover leans more toward investors who want to simulate the potential future dividends of stock holdings, calculate various scenarios for stock market performances and their impact on the portfolio and evaluate fundamental financial data of up to 10,000 stocks, ETFs and mutual funds.
One of the best features is the simulated historical portfolio simulator. Here you can add stocks and ETFs at some point in the past, and Stock Rover calculates how much your portfolio would be worth today with those holdings.
But that’s not all. Stock Rover has one of the most complete databases and financial metrics (over 650) for the whole universe of supported assets. In addition, users can connect all their portfolios to Stock Rover and manage them from one central place.
Costs: Stock Rover costs between $27.99 and $279.99 per year.
Best Offer: 25% Off and a 30-day free trial
5. TradingSim
Learning to trade the stock market is one of life’s most challenging yet rewarding things, and TradingSim developed its tool to help investors achieve their goals.
TradingSim is a stock market simulator focusing on the market replay of historical data (including level 2 market data). In addition, the tool comes with integrated TradingView charts.
TradingSim is a great tool that helps you build the psychology of a winner trader and boost your pattern recognition skills.
Learn, practice and test from one strategy at an affordable rate, 7 days a week, 24 hours per day, without downloads but full control over your trading experience.
Costs: The equities module (12,000+ stocks and ETFs) costs $49, futures (top 20 global contracts) also $49, or both modules combined $79 per month.
See Also: TradingSim review
What is a Stock Market Simulator
Paper trading with simulated accounts allows beginner traders and investors to simulate their stock market experience. The simulators allow practicing the platform features, trying new trading strategies and testing various investment scenarios. Buying and selling stocks and other assets can be done without risking your real money.
Stock market simulators are typically no games. They start with a simulated balance of typically $100,000, but you should change that setting to the portfolio amount you want to manage to get a realistic experience. Test what strategies work together, what to combine, what works, and what does not.
Even if you are an experienced investor, you should try new strategies, so give them a try in the simulated environment first and then move it to the real account, just like coders do when developing new software. There is always a development, testing and then productive system.
What Makes a Good Stock Market Simulator
A good stock market simulator combines the best features of real-money portfolios with no-risk trading.
Real-time market data: Ensure original stock exchange data feeds to power your simulated environment. Use unfiltered tick data, even if it costs a bit more per month. This way, your experience will come as close as possible to the real investing world.
Multiple tradeable assets: If you are a stock trader and never want to try other assets, such as options or currencies, it is okay to go with a stocks-only platform. However, if you want to test the efficiency of trading strategies on a broader market, use a more complete simulator.
Integrated research tools: If you are a day trader and only trade momentum without being interested in the catalyst of the price volatility, focus on straightforward day trading simulators. If you want to test investing strategies, you might want to research the driver of price changes, stay informed about company updates, or track multiple markets. If that’s the case, ensure your chosen stock market simulator has integrated research tools.
Charts: Charts are essential for visually confirming trading decisions and evaluating new trade ideas. Charts can be basic as line charts, but candlestick charts are better. Add trading indicators to the charts if they are needed for your analysis.
Best Stock Market Simulator Summary
The best stock market simulator with market replay is TradingSim, followed by Trade Ideas as the best day trading simulator and Stock Rover as the best investing simulator.
Like stock analysis software, stock market simulators are valuable for learning, developing, testing and risk-free trading. However, free tools should be typically avoided because of the lack of features. Paid tools come with real-time data and extensive functionalities, which is much better for ensuring a realistic simulated trading experience.
Other Stock Market Simulator Options
You need a stock market simulator with real-time market data to be as close to reality as possible. You should not consider simulate trading and investment habits using a simulator that works with hypothetical data since it does not give a realistic picture of the market. That’s because a simulated environment is mathematical and more rational than a stock market in real life.
If you want to simulate the performance of a specific stock in the past, use backtesting software while keeping in mind that past performance is never a guarantee for future results.
FAQ
How long should I use a trading simulator?
It would be best to use a trading simulator until you are continuously profitable with the chosen trading strategies. Remember, you must be successful on the simulator with paper money to be with real money. Therefore, investing some dollars per month in great tools is better than putting your entire capital at risk.
How much does a day trading simulator cost?
Day trading simulators cost between $50 and $200 per month since those platforms are more complex and feature-rich than free tools. Day traders want to work with real NYSE and Nasdaq tick data, different order types, hotkey trading, charting, and Level 2 order books, which makes the monthly fee more expensive.
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