Paper Trading
Trade from the chart on a $100,000 paper account, with no broker and no real money.
Paper Trading puts a simulated account inside Vela, our next-generation charting platform. Every signed-in trader starts with a $100,000 paper account. Orders are simulated against live prices, so you can practice entries, exits and sizing on the same chart you analyze. Nothing is ever sent to a broker or an exchange.
Paper Trading needs a signed-in account; signed out, the order panel offers Sign in and Sign up free and brings you back to the chart. On a phone it opens from Trade in the chart's bottom bar; see On a phone. Results are simulated: fills and margin are estimates and can differ from live execution.
Where everything is
| Part | Where | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Buy and Sell | On the chart, under the symbol | Sets up an order in the order panel, with the size shown between the buttons |
| Order panel | The panel rail on the right | The full ticket: side, order type, size, exits, time in force and presets |
| Trading panel | Under the chart. Open it with Trading in the chart's header | Your positions, working orders, order history, closed trades, activity and analytics |
| Trading settings | The gear in the trading panel, or Trading settings in the order panel's ⋯ menu | Chart, order, hotkey, preset, safety and paper account settings |
Place an order
Pick a side
Click Buy or Sell on the chart, or open the Order panel from the panel rail. A click on the chart's buttons sets the order up in the panel; it does not place it.
Choose the order type
Market fills at once. Limit and Stop wait at a price: type it, press Last to start from the last price, or drag the order's line on the chart.
Set the size
Type the size or use the quick sizes. The panel shows the order value, the margin it uses and its share of your equity before you place it. See Sizing.
Add exits (optional)
Set a Stop loss and a Take profit. Use 1% and Use 2% suggest a stop 1% and a target 2% from the entry, which you can then edit or drag.
Place it
The button reads the order back to you, for example Buy 10,000 USDJPY at market. With Ask before placing on, a confirmation shows the order exactly as it will be placed.
While you set an order up, its entry, stop loss and take profit already show on the chart as lines, each with the amount it would make or lose. Drag a line to change its price before you place the order.
Order types and time in force
| Order | Fills |
|---|---|
| Market | At once, at the price on the chart |
| Limit | At the limit price when price reaches it |
| Stop | When price trades through the stop. Stops account for gaps |
Limit and stop orders also take a Time in force:
| Option | The order stands |
|---|---|
| GTC | Until you cancel it |
| Day | For the day's session. The panel says which close it ends at. Not offered on crypto |
| IOC | Filled at once, or canceled. Not offered on stops |
| Until… | Until a date and time you pick |
Day orders follow the market's holiday calendar: a Day order placed before a market holiday ends at the next real close.
Exits
A stop loss and take profit attached to an entry are placed when the entry fills and cancel each other: when one fills, the other is removed. A trailing stop follows the best price the trade reaches, not just the latest price.
Type exits in the unit that fits your plan, using the Exits in chips:
| Unit | Example |
|---|---|
| Price | The exact price |
| % | A percentage from the entry |
| Ticks (Pips on forex) | A distance in ticks or pips |
| ATR | A multiple of the chart's ATR(14) |
| $ risk | The dollars lost at the stop, or made at the target |
Sizing
How you size depends on what you trade. Pick the unit from the chips in the order panel, or click the unit under the size on the chart's Buy and Sell: a Size in row slides out under the buttons with every unit for the asset. Picking one converts the size (1,000 USD becomes 0.0122 BTC) and folds the row away; click the unit again or press Esc to fold it without a change. The unit you pick is remembered for that kind of asset, on the chart, in the order panel and in bar replay.
| Asset | Size in |
|---|---|
| Forex | Lots (100,000 units), units, US dollars per pip, US dollars, % of equity |
| Stocks and ETFs | Shares, US dollars, % of equity |
| Crypto | US dollars, the coin, % of equity |
| Gold and silver | Ounces, US dollars, % of equity |
| Futures | Contracts, % of equity |
For stocks sized in shares, the order panel's quick sizes are 100, 250, 500 and 1,000 shares. Sizing in US dollars keeps the $1K, $5K, $10K and $25K quick sizes.
Risk in the order panel sizes the trade from the dollars you are willing to lose at your stop loss. Set the stop, type the amount, and the size is worked out for you. A size typed in dollars stays as you typed it while the price moves.
Manage trades on the chart
Open positions and working orders show as lines on the chart.
- Drag a working order's line to move it.
- Drag a working exit's size handle to resize it. The handle stops at the smaller of your open position and the amount left for that exit's entry to close. Its size label and P&L use that same limit.
- On desktop, +SL and +TP sit inside a position's label, beside its size and P&L. The red +SL adds a stop loss; the green +TP adds a take profit. Each button appears only while that exit is missing.
- Drag +SL or +TP to the price where you want the exit. You can also drag an exit out of the position's line.
- To add an exit without dragging, click +SL or +TP. For an open position, the initial stop is 1% from the last price and the initial target is 2% from it, on the appropriate side for the position. The usual order confirmation applies. You can then drag the exit's line to adjust its price.
- Click a line's × to cancel an order, or to close a position.
- On a position, the × offers Close 25%, Close 50%, Close 75% and Close all. The reverse button requests a position reversal.
- Right-click the chart at a price to set up a buy or sell limit or stop there. Below the last price a buy is a limit and a sell is a stop; above it, the other way round.
Right-click the Buy and Sell buttons to hide them, or drag them by their header to anywhere on the chart; their place is remembered.
The trading panel
The trading panel under the chart shows the account you are trading and six tabs. On a wide panel, the account sits in a column at the left, so the tabs get the panel's full height:
- Account: the account's name. Click it to switch accounts in place.
- Equity: with its gain since the starting balance, for example +$545.30 · +0.55% since $100,000.
- Today: how many trades closed today (UTC) and their net, then the latest of them.
- Open: how many positions are open and their P&L, then each position with its side and size. Click one to open its symbol on the chart.
- Cash: at the foot.
On a narrower panel, the account and its Balance, Equity, Open P&L and Today (UTC) run across the top instead.
| Tab | Shows |
|---|---|
| Positions | Open positions with quantity, open P&L, average entry, last price and realized P&L, plus Reverse and Close. Close's arrow offers Close 25%, 50%, 75% or all, each asked first |
| Orders | Working orders |
| Order history | Every order, filterable by Filled, Canceled and Rejected |
| Trades | Closed trades with net P&L, return, run-up, drawdown, entry, exit, value and duration |
| Activity | A log of fills, moves and cancels |
| Analytics | Net P&L, win rate, profit factor and expectancy for a period, the net P&L curve, exits, and results, risk, habits, symbols and sides. See Analytics |
Click a position or a working order to open its symbol on the chart, on the market you last charted it on. Close, Reverse and the other buttons on a row do only what they say.
Run-up is the most a trade was ahead between its entry and exit, and Drawdown the most it was behind. Download the Trades tab with CSV.
Reversing a paper position
On a LuxAlgo paper account, Reverse attempts to close the position, then open the opposite side. The new order is placed only after the close fills.
If the available paper margin cannot cover the full size, Reverse can open a smaller position and reports its size. If the margin cannot cover any opening quantity, the position can close without opening the opposite side; the result message explains why it did not open. Check Positions for the result.
Analytics
The Analytics tab reads the trades the account has closed.
- The figures. Net P&L, Win rate, Profit factor and Expectancy, for Today, 7 days, 30 days or All time. Under 20 trades, a note says there are too few trades to judge.
- The curve. Net P&L trade by trade from $0, with the drawdown in its own strip below. Hover a point for the trade: when it closed, its symbol and side, its P&L, the total after it and how far the total sat below its best.
- Exits. What your winners kept of their run-up against what they gave back, with a dot per winner and the average marked.
- Results, Risk, Habits, Symbols and sides. Average and largest win and loss, fees, max drawdown, best and worst day, streaks, trades per day, hold times, long and short win rates, and your best, worst and most traded symbols.
Each paper account gets its own journal in the Trade Journal, and its fills are recorded there, so you can review practice trades the same way as real ones.
On a phone
In the phone layout, the chart's bottom bar reads: the symbol, the timeframe, Trade, the chart type, + and ⋮.
A narrow desktop window using a mouse can keep the chart toolbar instead. Trade stays in that toolbar and opens the Trade sheet when the window is narrower than 768 pixels.
- Trade opens the Trade sheet, with two sides: Order, the order panel, and Positions, your open positions. The chart moves up above the sheet, so the latest bars and your lines stay in view. Nothing is placed until you press the sheet's own button.
- Drag the grabber up for a taller sheet. Swipe down on its header, or on its content scrolled to the top, to step it down or close it.
- A position line's close or reverse opens the Positions side, which asks its usual question there.
- On a touch screen, a position's +SL and +TP are always shown, and the chart's trade labels are larger.
- During a bar replay, Trade gives way to an order strip under the replay bar.
Paper accounts
You can keep up to 5 paper accounts, each with its own name, starting balance, positions and journal. A prop-firm candidate might keep one at a challenge's account size next to the default $100,000 account.
Manage them in Trading settings › Paper accounts:
- New paper account opens a dialog for a name and a starting balance between $1,000 and $10,000,000, in whole dollars.
- Set balance resets an account to a balance you pick.
- Rename and Delete. Your only paper account can't be deleted; reset it instead.
Switch the account you trade on from the account name at the top of the order panel or of the trading panel's account column.
Speed: presets, hotkeys and one-click
- Order presets save a size, exits and time in force under a name. Pick one from Preset in the order panel. You can keep up to 9.
- Shift+B and Shift+S set up a buy or a sell in the order panel.
- Shift+1 to Shift+9 are yours to assign in Trading settings › Hotkeys: each sends a side and a size, or applies a preset.
- One-click trading (Trading settings › Chart) makes a click on the chart's Buy or Sell place a market order at once. Paper accounts only, in this browser.
- Sounds (Trading settings › Chart) lets you choose which trading events you hear. Turn it on to reveal separate switches for Fill, Refused, Move, and Cancel. Use Play beside a tone to preview it, or the main Play to hear the tones you have enabled. These choices are saved in this browser and also apply in Replay.
Hotkeys never fire while you are typing or while a dialog is open. See every key in Shortcuts.
Markets, fills and margin
Paper balances are in US dollars, so paper trading covers symbols priced in dollars:
- US stocks and ETFs
- Crypto quoted in USD, USDT or USDC
- Forex pairs quoted in USD, and pairs with USD as the base, such as USDJPY, counted in dollars
- Spot gold and silver
- Supported US futures, including minis and micros
Pairs with no dollar in them, such as EURGBP, and symbols listed abroad are refused with a message saying why.
Orders fill on the market your chart shows. A Bitcoin chart on Binance fills at Binance's price, not Coinbase's, and the stop loss and take profit are checked against that market's prices too. When an order does not name a chart market, Vela uses the symbol's own market.
For order pricing, Vela reads the latest one-minute price from its data server. When the market is closed and there are no recent minutes, it uses the latest daily close. If the server cannot return a price in time, a paper order can fall back to the price supplied by the order panel.
Supported CME futures use the extended Globex session for paper order pricing, including evening and overnight trading while the market is open. Working limits, stops, and take profits are checked against those session prices. Server-side futures quotes and position marks use the same session. US stock and ETF orders use regular-session prices.
| Asset | Margin |
|---|---|
| Stocks and crypto | Paid in full |
| Forex | 50:1 |
| Gold and silver | 20:1 |
| Futures | 25% of the full contract margin during the session; full margin shortly before the close and while the session is closed. Micro and mini contracts use their own contract sizes. |
Under the account figures, Margin used shows how much margin your open positions hold against your account equity. The difference is the equity left to support additional positions. Margin depends on the market and position size; it is not the same as the position's full dollar value.
Holding futures overnight
Paper futures switch to full overnight margin 10 minutes before the session closes. On a normal trading day, that is 4:50 p.m. New York time, before the 5 p.m. close. Early-close sessions use their earlier closing time. Full margin continues through the closure; intraday margin returns when the next session opens.
If your equity would not cover overnight margin, the account bar shows a warning during the 30 minutes before the close. It shows the equity required, your current equity, and the positions at risk of being closed. Reduce those positions before the overnight requirement takes effect if you want to avoid automatic closes.
From 10 minutes before the session closes, Paper Trading automatically closes futures positions if your account cannot cover the full margin. It closes the positions using the most margin first, until the remaining positions fit. The warning is an estimate; the decision uses your account equity and prices at the time of the check.
These are Vela's paper-trading margin rules. They do not describe the requirements of a live brokerage account.
Safety
- Ask before placing (on by default) confirms orders from the order panel and moves on the chart. A limit or stop more than 5% from the price always asks.
- Ask before closing a position is on by default. Reversing a position always asks.
- The Kill switch stops trading on the account: new orders are refused until you turn it off.
Trading with Quant
Quant, our coding agent, can read your paper account, propose orders and exits for you to approve, and check a strategy against prop firm rules. Nothing is placed until you approve it. See Trading with Quant.
Paper trading and replay
While the chart replays the past, the order panel steps aside and the live Buy and Sell buttons hide. Trade the replay from the replay bar instead. See Trade a replay.