Before you dive into online trading with a head and start to
trade your own real money, the most important thing - try your hand on a demo account. According to its functional characteristics demo account does not
differ from a live trading account. It uses exactly the same trading platform,
as well as in real trading. The only difference is that you are trading with
virtual money. Other characteristics like movement of exchange rates and
financial instruments, making deals, technical analysis and installation of
pending orders repeats the real account.
The demo account allows the trader to get acquainted with
the trade practices in the financial market, as well as to gain experience with
the trading platforms. A demo account is an indispensable tool for sharpening
trading strategies, systems, and automatic expert in the real market
conditions.
The only drawback of demo accounts that a lot of traders and
personally I experienced is that you don't feel the real risk of losing money
and you can allow yourself to trade irresponsibly. Good thing it quickly disappears
when you start to trade on real accounts.
In the future, when you become an experienced trader, you can also use a demo account. Since it's a great opportunity to test your trading system (strategy) on real data in real time, before applying it to real money. Professionals always recommend to test the new trading systems on a demo account, and only then use them in your real trading.