Demo Balance
How to use demo so that it teaches you something.
Set the demo account to your real plan and avoid spoiling your own habits.
Set the demo account to your real plan and avoid spoiling your own habits.
A demo account runs on the same quotes as a real one. One thing differs: a mistake costs experience rather than money. Which gives demo its own trap — how easy it is to top up.
When a balance can be restored in one click, risk stops being felt. Someone stakes $500 against a real plan of $100, gets a winning run, carries the same behaviour onto real money — and loses the deposit in days.
- 01Set the demo balance close to your real plan ($50-100)
- 02Work at a fixed trade size of 1-2%
- 03Keep a daily limit as if the money were real
- 04Write the reason for entering before pressing the button
- 05Do not top demo up after a losing run — review it
The last point matters most. A losing run on demo is free material for analysis. Restoring the balance with a click throws that material away and leaves you with the same mistake.
Demo trains behaviour, not forecasting. And behaviour transfers to a real account in full — together with the trade size and the reaction to losses.
Key takeaways
- Demo and real run on the same quotes; only the cost of a mistake differs.
- A demo balance far from your real plan trains the wrong behaviour.
- A losing run on demo is material to review, not a balance to restore.
A practical example
Two demo setups for comparison: a balance of $10,000 with $200 trades, and a balance of $100 with $2 trades.
The first trains you to work with money you will not have. The second trains exactly the behaviour you will need on a real account.
A note from Leon Mercer Academy
Set the demo balance once, at the start, and treat a top-up as an admission that the run has not been reviewed.
Lesson 5 of 15 in “BINODEX START”