Set Up a Virtual Account

Create a paper trading account, assign a strategy, and monitor simulated P&L in real time.

Virtual Accounts let you paper trade with real-time signals in a risk-free simulated environment. Unlike live or demo trading, no exchange is involved; the system tracks your hypothetical P&L using actual market prices and your assigned strategy's signals.

Navigate to Virtual Accounts

Click Virtual Accounts in the left sidebar.

Create a new account

Click Create Account. Fill in:

Account name: for your reference
Starting Balance: $10,000 recommended for realistic position sizing
Leverage: Start at 1×
Position Mode: One-way (simpler) or Hedge (allows simultaneous long and short)
Margin Mode: Cross (shares margin across positions) or Isolated (separate margin per position)

Assign a strategy

On your new account, click Assign Strategy. Search for or select the strategy you've backtested. You can optionally override leverage at the assignment level (e.g. account leverage = 1× but this specific strategy runs at 2×).

Monitor your account

The account dashboard shows current balance, unrealised P&L on open positions, and a balance evolution chart over time. Check back daily.

Review the trade ledger

Every simulated trade is recorded: entry/exit price, direction, quantity, holding time, P&L. This is your ground truth for evaluating live performance vs. backtest performance.

Run multiple strategies simultaneously

Assign multiple strategies to the same account or create separate accounts per strategy for isolation. Separate accounts make it easier to compare strategies without their P&Ls mixing.

Enable or disable assignments

Toggle any assignment off at any time without losing its trade history. This is useful for pausing a strategy during high-uncertainty regime periods.

Run a virtual account for at least 4 weeks, ideally through at least one regime transition, before making live trading decisions. A 3-day paper trading run tells you almost nothing about real performance.

Virtual accounts cannot model all live trading risks: exchange-level slippage, API downtime, order rejection, and liquidity constraints are not simulated. Results will be slightly more optimistic than real demo or live trading.

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