Trading Simulators: The Underrated Edge Most Traders Ignore
How Market Replay Can Sharpen Your Execution & Price Action Skills
Do you ever use a trading simulator?
Not just a demo account, but actually replaying market conditions…like a movie, bar by bar, testing your price action skills as if it were unfolding live?
Why do I ask?
Well, I was reading a 15-year-old blog post from Brett Steenbarger the other day
Training Traders: The Role of Simulation in Supercharging Learning and it got me thinking…
Should we all be using a simulator more?
MARKET REPLAY: AN UNDERRATED EDGE
A lot of traders I know use the replay function on TradingView.
But I’d bet more don’t than do… and I think that’s a missed opportunity.
Here’s how a simulator can level up your game:
Replay your own trades: Both the ones you nailed and the ones you butchered. Missing a trade by a few ticks stings… but you can replay and see what you missed.
Replay key times of day: Like every opening 15 minutes from the last month, compressed into a weekend. Mainlining opens on a Sunday morning, anyone?!
Replay specific conditions: Trend days, range days, news-driven moves, whatever you want to master. If you were a total sadist you could replay the price action from Trump’s tweets…
The list is endless.
So this weekend, maybe take a minute to think:
How could you use simulation to refine your execution and price action read?
Because the best traders don’t just learn from live markets… they train for them.