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Pre-Signup
What makes you special?
Well, there are lots of reasons. But here are two things that we think are pretty important:
- Our Platform is Awesome! We’ve worked very hard to make a platform that is both advanced enough to be useful and simple enough to not be overwhelming. Regardless of your trading skill level, papertrademe.com is going to rock your world!
- We’re not a Brokerage. We know what it’s like to try and work with a broker. At the end of the day, they want your money and they want to earn commission, often at the detriment of your portfolio. There’s certainly a place for brokers, but we think practicing without being pushed to live trade is super important. Read more about this here.
What commodities are available to mock trade?
Our list of commodities is ever growing, but here’s what is available now.
- Softs
- Orange Juice (OJ)
- Cocoa (CC)
- Coffee (KC)
- Sugar #11 (SB)
- Lumber (LB)
- Cotton #2 (CT)
- Meats & Live Stock
- Lean Hogs (HE)
- Feeder Cattle (GF)
- Live Cattle (LE)
- Agriculture
- Rough Rice (ZR)
- Oats (ZO)
- Soybean Meal (ZM)
- Soybean Oil (ZL)
- Soybeans (ZS)
- Wheat (ZW)
- Corn (ZC)
- Energy
- Natural Gas (NG)
- Heating Oil (HO)
- Crude Oil (CL)
- Metals
- Copper (HG)
- Silver (SI)
- Gold (GC)
Is there a limit on how much I can practice with?
Nope! You can trade as much as you want! Seriously, if you want to see what having $100,000 to trade with is like, go for it. If $5,000 is more realistic for you, that’s cool, too. You can even do $1,000,000! We also do not put a limit on how many orders you can place. Your subscription covers it all!
How do I sign up?
We’re still in development, but we’re fast approaching the launch! We’re offering our early adopters a great price to lock down, so be sure to sign up for our Newsletter. Click here to sign up.
How much does it cost?
Please view our Pricing page.
What type of trades can I make?
Papertrademe.com supports both Long and Short trading for
- Market orders
- Stop orders
- Limit orders
Is your financial data live, delayed, or historical?
The financial data we use is refreshed every 15 minutes, and is, therefore, “delayed”.
General Commodity Questions
Do contracts expire?
Yes, contracts do expire. In a real life situation you need to exit or “rollover” all open contracts about 8-14 days before they expire. If you do not exit a contract, then you are indicating that you would like to receive delivery of the commodity.
What is a “Limit Order”?
Limit Order
A Limit order is…
Can you give advice on which commodities to enter?
Yes! Paper trade! That’s why we built this site. So you can know which commodity to enter. But if you’re asking if we can give advice on trading a specific commodity, then no, we can’t. We’re not brokerage and we don’t intend to be.
That being said, if you do find a guru or broker that gives you advice, we highly recommend that you paper trade his or her advice. It’s ok to take advice, but you still need to be careful. Click here to read more about our philosophy on brokers and gurus.
What is a “Market Order”?
A market order is a long (buy) or short (sell) order to be executed immediately at current market prices. For the purposes of papertrademe.com, we assume that the market is fluid and will therefore be filled immediately at the current price.
How is profit calculated?
Profit is calculated slightly different depending on the commodity. It’s really one of the biggest reasons that makes paper trading on papertrademe.com so enjoyable. We take the monotony out of calculating your profit or loss.
Here’s an example on how to calculate the profit or loss of Corn.
Formula
Ticks * Tick value * number of contracts.
Let’s say you entered a long contract of March corn at the trading price of 400.25 and few days later you exited that contract at 401.25. We know that one tick is 0.25 and it each tick is worth $12.50 in profit or loss. Therefore, the total profit for this trade would be $50.
4 ticks X $12.50 *1 contract = $50
There are tools out there to make these calculations a bit easier, like this one here.
But still, an even easier way would be to paper trade with papertrademe.com. We do all the calculations for you AND keep track of your trades.
Papertrademe.com Usage
Does papertrademe.com simulate brokerage fees or commissions?
No, papertrademe.com does not simulate brokerage fees or commissions in simulated trades at this time.
Why is the status of my open trade showing “Expiring” or “Expired”?
All futures contracts expire. Each commodity has a specific, predetermined time that its contracts will expire. This is also true on papertrademe.com. 14 days before a futures contract that you are in is set to expire, the status will change to “Expiring”. And then on the day of expiration it will show “Expired”.
Unless you are planning on taking delivery of the commodity (very few want to do this), you should get out of the trade 8-14 days before the expiration date. (Expiration dates for different commodities vary.) If you want to continue trading that specific commodity, however, then you should “rollover” the contract to the next available trading month. Rolling over a contract is simply exiting the expiring month’s contract and entering a new contract in a further out month.
What is a “Stop Order”?
A stop order, sometimes called a stop-loss order, is an order to go long (buy) or go short (sell) one or more contracts once the price of the stock reaches a specific price. When the market moves to the price you have specified, the stop order becomes a market order.
Buy (Long) Stop orders must be placed above the current price. Please consider using a Limit order or a Market order.
Sell (Short) Stop orders must be placed below the current price.
The two main ways to use a stop order are:
To stop loss
Let’s assume you are in a contract of Wheat. You got in long at 405.00 and it is currently still at 405.00. You can place a sell stop order at 403.00, which would prevent losses beyond $100. This is great for mitigating risk.
To secure profit
Again, let’s assume you are in a contract of Wheat. You got in long at 405.00 and it has gone up to 408.50 for a profit of $175. You can secure some of your profit by placing a sell stop at 407.00, thus *locking in a profit of $100 if the market turns against you. As the price of Wheat continues to go up, you can continue moving your stop up so that you lock in more and more profit.
*Note: In a real life situation, the stop price you specify may actually get filled at a lower price depending on fluidity and other market factors. For the purposes of papertrademe.com, orders will always be filled at the specified price once the market touches or goes through the price.