emini NQ


I am trying to buy and sell a NQ contract within a five min. bar. I have had success using Interactive Brokers demo program. But my plan of buy and sell 2 tick moves does not seem to apply in the "real world". Is this a viable way of trading?
Thanks,
Ross
When you used the Interactive Broker's demo how realistic was it? For example, when you put in a limit to sell/buy, did it queue the order behind all the others and wait until they'd been filled before it accepted yours as filled? Or, as soon as the price was touched, did it accept your order as filled?

Another related question: Can you use the demo and real trading platform at the same time and enter the same orders and get the same results?

So my questions here are trying to ascertain if the simulator was realistic or not. There are some out there (like Ninja Trader) that are very realistic because they take a look at the number of orders queued at the price that you place a limit at and don't fill your simulated order until at least that many contracts have traded at that price (on the relevant bid/ask side).

Your question about a 'viable way of trading' should take into account your profitability. Some people can't trade 2 tick targets but you might be able to. We need to establish if your strategy is failing by coincidence when you went live or if it's a transition problem. The answer to that question is really: If you had 2 computers and traded one on the demo account and the other live would they have the same results? If the answer is yes then it's not the transition from sim to real trading but the strategy.
day trading thanks for the reply. IB demo is using data that is one week old. The fill speed is very slow. I do not think that the two platforms will return identical results. The demo seems to be a lot more volatile.
So you were making money with the demo trading 5 minute bars with 1 week old data. But when you use live data you don't make money.

I'm not sure if I understand if it's your fills that are causing the problems or the strategy? Perhaps you can help me here?
the fills are quicker on the live system. just dont see the repeating patterns develop when I trade live. I guess I just want to know if my strategy is workable on a real time bases. Or am I over trading? Or I just don't get it?
Thanks
It sounds like when you're trading live you're not using the same patterns as entry/exit signals that you used when you were paper trading. So that's a problem right away. If you've tested a pattern while doing simulated trading or back testing and it worked on paper you need to use that same pattern when trading live. If you don't see it then standa aside and wait until you see it.

Over trading a profitable pattern is (theoretically) not possible. Say you target 2 ticks and use a stop of 2 ticks and you're profitable 80% of the time. In such a situation, after commissions you should be profitable over a series of trades. Now the more you trade the more profits you'll make because you win X% of the time. So you will want to trade as much as possible and there will be no such thing as over trading.

What you might be referring to is trading without a pattern or strategy. So while you're waiting for your pattern/setup to appear you take trades that "look good" but in reality you have no basis for knowing if they really are profitable setups. So instead of waiting for your 2 setups per day to appear and just trading those you also trade 8 other "good looking" setups. That you might call over trading but in fact those other 8 trades were just random trades and at the end of the day (after commissions) will yield a negative result.