Forex Practice Accounts - What are they really

By: Matt Ellsworth
Forex test accounts allow you to trade the forex market while not putting your hard earned capital at risk. These accounts are often also called forex demo accounts, these accounts should be free - so if a forex broker is trying to charge you for one – just say I'll pass and look for another broker.

Most forex test accounts will work for roughly 30 days, some are longer and some are shorter it all depends based on the broker that you choose to open your test account with. We have found some forex brokers even let you continue to use the account for longer than the time frame that they say it the account is useable. However, other brokers will discontinue the account as soon as the time period is up.

Forex brokers offer forex test accounts to people as a way to get other people interested in their forex trading software and use their forex broker services. As a result - they will collect some basic information from you when you open your forex test account. Depending on the broker, they may call you and see how you are doing with the account and see if they can help you get started in a live account. Remember they get paid a commission only when you are making trades in a live forex account not the forex test account.

Our advice is to use a forex test account until you have tested your forex trading strategy and are comfortable trading the foreign currency market. There is nothing worse than making a mistake in a live account, especially when its something that you should have learned not to do in your test account. If you aren’t sure yet of how you are going to trade the foreign currency market and you are looking for a simple and easy to use system that will take about 15 minutes to use - you should check out FreedomRocks - it is an effective and easy to use forex trading system.

We have learned a lot using forex test accounts to test out different strategies and test new theories. Often times we will be running anywhere from 3 to 5 test accounts at the same time just to try out different forex strategies. Some brokers make it easy to have many accounts and other brokers make it impossible. The broker we use allows us to create new test accounts in just a few mouse clicks and they don’t care how many test accounts you have – as a result – it makes it a lot easier to test theories on their software as opposed to other forex brokers.

Even after you have been trading the forex market for a many years you will want to experiment and test out new methods of trading and that is what forex test accounts are great for. Test your new forex style without putting any money at risk in a test account.