The markets can be intimidating. As you begin to research how best to invest, you’re faced with a huge amount of information, conflicting ideas on Investment strategies, and a startling array of platforms on which to make your trades.

Even after weeks or months of research, it can feel overwhelming to put your Money on the line as no matter how much research you perform the nature of the markets is that there is never a guarantee that your investment will perform well. However, there is a way to test out how your stocks and strategy performs before you risk your own money – trading simulators.

Whilst past performance is never a guarantee of future results, it can be useful to see how your ideas might perform over a three month or even longer period can be helpful to see whether you want to invest in the future or whether you would prefer to leave your investments in the hands of professional investors and hedge funds.

A trading simulator is essentially an exact replica of a trading platform, where you have access to all the data and tools of a real trading account, but with two major differences – you do not trade with real money and you do not really own any of the stocks or shares. This means that when your simulated investments go up in value you do not make money and when they go down you do not lose money, there is no real risk or reward.

Many traders use simulators to test out possible trading strategies before investing real money or to test out a platform’s data and tools to see how it compares to other options to find the one that offers them the best fit for the lowest fees.

How to choose a trading platform

Before choosing a platform on which to make your trades it is critical to first research each of the options available in your locality to find the one that best matches your needs and requirements.

Trading simulators are a great way to test out a platform and see whether it offers you the information and tools you need to make your trading decisions. Here are some other key features to look out for:

Data and charts

You need data to make decisions and the best platforms give you access to the most up-to-date pricing data as well as graphs and charts to help you understand the past performance of each asset over time. As well as the latest pricing, you should be able to easily access charts that show an assets performance over the last day, week, month, year, five-year and longer time periods.

A wide range of assets

Whilst stocks and shares are often the most popular options to trade, many trading platforms will also give you the opportunity to trade other assets such as commodities, currencies (forex), ETFs, options and futures, and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether. Some people will focus their trades on a single asset class, but others prefer to hedge their investments across a wider variety of assets to better manage the risk and volatility in their portfolios.

Support for long and short trading strategies

A long trading strategy is a bet that an asset will go up in value over time. If, however, you believe that an asset will fall in value then you can profit from this decline by “shorting”. Most trading platforms should make it easy to work with both strategies, but it is always important to check first.

Ease of use

Trading platforms generally include a vast amount of data and offer numerous ways for traders to interact with that data and make their trades based on their interpretation of it. Such a wealth of information can, however, be difficult to understand and so the best platforms will be clear and well laid out to make sure that traders best understand the information they need.

Low fees

One simple way to compare online brokers and trading platforms is on the fees that they charge. Some platforms charge on a subscription model whilst others charge commission on each trade. Low fees are always attractive, and should certainly be part of any decision, but it is only one part of the decision as you do also want the best data and a platform you are comfortable using.

Good customer support

Nobody ever plans to talk to Support, but the reality is that with something as complex as a trading platform you may well end up needing to check with support about an issue down the line. It is important that the platform offers knowledgeable support in your time-zone when you need it most.

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