Paper trading — riskmanaged.io docs

The same execution path as live, on real-time prices, with simulated capital — the honest test that a backtest cannot be.

Paper trading runs your strategy on live, real-time prices with simulated capital. It is the step between a backtest and real money, and it is the one that actually tells you something — a backtest is graded on history it was tuned against, while paper trading faces a market that has not happened yet and cannot be gamed.

Real prices, simulated money#

The value of paper trading is that almost everything about it is real. Only the capital and the fills are simulated.

Same prices, same rules, same execution path, even a slippage model — the only things that change on the way to live are that the fill becomes real and the money becomes yours.

What is real#

Live prices — the same real-time feed a live strategy trades on.
Your rules — signals evaluate on each new candle exactly as they would live.
Risk management — stop losses and take profits fire the same way.
Notifications — position changes reach your alert channels.
A slippage model — fills are not assumed perfect (see below).

What is simulated#

The capital — you set a starting balance; no real funds are touched.
The fills — orders are filled on the platform's shared paper exchange rather than a real order book.

Starting a paper strategy#

From your strategy list, press Paper Trade on the strategy.
In the Start Paper Trading dialog, set a starting balance — 10,000 is a sensible default; position sizing works from it.
Turn on Enabled for Trading in the strategy's Overview tab. That is the switch that lets positions actually be entered — without it the strategy runs but opens nothing.

Your paper trades then appear in the Positions view alongside everything else you trade, with full fund-grade statistics.

TIP

A strategy can run on paper and live at the same time. Keeping a paper venue running after you go live gives you an honest, uninterrupted track record to compare the live fills against.

Slippage — fills aren't free#

Paper trading models slippage so results aren't flattered by assuming every order fills at the exact price. Slippage starts at 0.5% and increases by 0.5% on each retry: if an order can't fill because price has moved away, the next attempt allows more slippage until it fills. This mirrors the reality that getting in during a fast move costs more than the mid-price.

Limits#

How many strategies you can paper-trade at once is set by your plan tier. See plans for the limit on yours.

Trading a paper venue by hand#

Paper trading isn't only for automated strategies. You can place manual orders on a paper venue too — Buy, Sell, Close and Flip — from the trading terminal, which is the safe place to learn the mechanics of order entry before any capital is real.

Ready to go live?#

When a strategy has a paper record you actually believe, connect an exchange and promote it. The whole live path is in going live.