Meanings
- businessA simulated form of trading where individuals practice buying and selling securities, such as stocks or options, using virtual rather than real money.
Learning from paper trading may be difficult for a number of reasons, including that it requires significant discipline to keep track of hypothetical trades and that transaction prices for hypothetical trades are not observable.
2010, Amit Seru, Tyler Shumway, Noah Stoffman, “Learning by Trading”, in The Review of Financial Studies, volume 23, number 2, Oxford University Press. Sponsor: The Society for Financial Studies., pages 712–713 fn. 18 of 705–739Synonyms: demo trading, paper investing, simulated trading
- gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of paper trade
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA simulated form of trading where individuals practice buying and selling securities, such as stocks or options, using virtual rather than real money.
Origin
From the habits of less digital eras, when people used pens to record their imagined plans in personal notebooks and later assessed their progress through sources like physical newspapers.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
Finnish leikkisijoitus
- leikkisijoitusmaintenance of a hypothetical portfolio for learning the stock market
German Paper-Trading, Demo-Trading
- Paper-Tradingmaintenance of a hypothetical portfolio for learning the stock market
- Demo-Tradingmaintenance of a hypothetical portfolio for learning the stock market
- Demohandelmaintenance of a hypothetical portfolio for learning the stock market
Russian бумажная торговля, демо-торговля
- бумажная торговля (bumažnaja torgovlja)maintenance of a hypothetical portfolio for learning the stock market
- демо-торговля (demo-torgovlja)maintenance of a hypothetical portfolio for learning the stock market
- виртуальная торговля (virtualʹnaja torgovlja)maintenance of a hypothetical portfolio for learning the stock market
Cite this entry
paper trading. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/paper%20trading
“paper trading.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/paper%20trading. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “paper trading,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/paper%20trading.
Source: paper trading on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.