How to Paper Trade Without Risking Money

Paper trading lets you practise entries, exits and position sizing with virtual money. On TradingLead, paper trading runs on the same simulation engine as backtesting. Orders are simulated against chart candles and are never sent to a broker.

There are two ways to practise:

1. Manual replay practice: trade a past market candle by candle (most common).
2. Forward paper: run a completed Python strategy against new live closed candles.

Before you start

• Open the charts workspace at tradinglead.in/charts (5-day free trial, then subscription; see pricing).
• If bar replay is new to you, read Practice trading with bar replay first.

Manual replay practice

Step 1: Pick the market and starting point

Choose the feed, stock and interval. Start bar replay and move the cursor to the candle where you want to begin, then pause. Practice captures up to 300 earlier candles for context and the next page of up to 2,000 closed candles. The starting candle stays hidden, so you can't see what happens next.

Step 2: Start the paper session

Open the Paper Trading tab and choose Start new replay session (or use Trade → Start practice from the replay toolbar). A flat, paused account is created with these defaults:

• 1,00,000 virtual units (in the symbol's quote currency; no conversion)
• 5 bps commission and 2 bps slippage
• shorts allowed, no automatic stop or target

Step 3: Place orders

Use Buy or Sell to open the order ticket:

• Order types: market, limit, stop and stop-limit.
• Protection: optional stop-loss and target, which you can adjust on open positions.
• Risk-% sizing: estimates quantity from your stop distance and lot settings. It excludes fees, slippage and gaps, so it does not guarantee a maximum loss.

Market orders in manual replay fill at the latest revealed close, with slippage and fees. Limit and stop orders wait for later candles. Rejected orders are shown as rejected, never as filled.

Step 4: Move forward

Click Next to reveal one candle, or Play to advance continuously (the speed slider targets 0.1-200 bars per second). Playback pauses on fills, triggers and rejections by default. Keyboard shortcuts: Shift+Down to play/pause and Shift+Right to step.

When captured candles run out, Play/Next fetches the next page from the same feed and keeps your account going.

Step 5: Manage and review

From the account view you can amend or cancel orders, adjust protection, partially or fully close positions, and see history. Trades appear as markers on the chart. Made a decision you want to retry? Back restores one of up to 20 recent checkpoints.

Practise across several stocks

When you switch symbols during replay, choose Continue replay. The account captures the new stock on the same feed and interval and keeps the shared replay time. Up to ten instruments can share one paper account.

Forward paper from a backtest

After a Python strategy backtest completes (see Backtest a strategy), open the completed run and choose Continue in → Forward paper on a fresh live 1-240 minute chart with the same feed, symbol and interval.

• A flat new account starts, and only confirmed closed candles advance it.
• It pauses when ticks are older than 90 seconds, data disconnects or candles are missed. You can review and catch up to 100 missed closed candles.
• It runs only while the page is open and does not auto-resume after reload. There is a 5,000-candle run limit.

Contests

Signed-in users can also join scheduled paper contests on /contests: equal virtual INR funds, server-observed prices and up to 100 participants. Contests are free practice with no real orders and no prizes.

Keep it honest

• Paper fills are simulations on candles. Real markets add queueing, partial fills, liquidity gaps and emotions.
• Use realistic costs and position sizes, the same as you would with real money.
• Paper profits are not evidence of future results. This is practice, not investment advice.

For more on how the account and orders work, see Paper trading.