Depending how you started in Forex and depending on your method of trading, you may have begun to trade live already. But if you haven’t traded live and you are wondering when the right time would be, perhaps this article will be of help.

My personal opinion is that everyone that is serious about making money in Forex should start trading live as soon as possible. The reason is that the lessons learned when you trade live have much more impact than they do when trading a demo.

One of the things I do each year is volunteer my time to coach basketball. We start with kids as young as 4 years old. One night a week we spend an hour teaching them the fundamentals of the game; how to pass, dribble, shoot and play defense. But on Saturdays we play a game with a clock and a referee who blows a whistle when they make mistakes. Coaches are allowed on the floor in the early ages to help the kids and the referees always explain what each whistle means.

Why do we play games so soon? Because kids get better faster when they are in a game. During the week you can explain what “traveling with the ball is” until you are blue in the face. The kids still travel. But put them in a game and have an official blow his whistle when they make the error and it only takes a few times and the kids have it down.

Trading live is much the same thing. First, just because you know how to enter a trade in theory doesn’t mean you will actually do it right when the time comes. You may click on Buy when you meant to click on Sell. You may enter you stop incorrectly. There are all kinds of administrative things that take on more meaning when you are trading live.

Also, you will actually feel the exhilaration of making money even if it is only 40 or 50 cents on a trade and you will have to deal with questions like should you hold onto a trade overnight or over the weekend? You will probably feel like a failure if you lose a trade. It will also help you develop your style or trading. Maybe you like the idea of short-term trading yet when you actually do it you find you are not able to make the decisions required to be successful and you find that you are better at trading longer time frames. All of these things and more will begin to develop you into a trader.

There are many things that live trading will teach you and you can open accounts with as little as $ 100. If you blow out 4 or 5 of these accounts you will learn more from that than spending thousands of dollars on a Forex course or seminar.

So, if you have been trading a demo account consider opening a small live account and begin to learn some of the lessons that will make you a better trader, you will be glad you did.