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If you just have the strategy running, you can see how it would perform in real time (keeping in mind strategy fills prices won;t always be accurate). The only thing you would not see are actual orders being sent, and fills - that can only be seen in a Sim acct or in real acct. With the strat running, but not in any acct., you'd just see the strategy fills in your performance report. The SIM fills would likely be wrong (compared to real money) anyway.
If by "test few automated strategies realtime" you mean check that orders are sent properly, and fills and cancels come back right, you MIGHT see that in SIM account. But if by "test" you mean you want to evaluate P/L performance, SIM is definitely not good for that.
If you are using SIM to "prove" the profitability of your strategy, I think you are likely to reach bad conclusions. For example, SIM always assumes that limit orders are filled immediately upon touching. Real world that is almost never true. This means scalping type strats are almost impossible to SIM test.
What is the best way to test realtime? It really starts with your strategy. You have to create a strategy that can be replicated in the real time. For example, let's say you use only "buy/sell next bar at market" type orders in your strategy. If you include proper amounts for slippage (say 2x the normal bid/ask spread per round turn), your backtest results and live results will match up pretty well. This was the only way I did it for years.
As you start to get confidence that backtest and live are equal with simple orders, you can then begin to use more complicated orders. Then you can run limited tests with real money, and usually you will see pretty soon if there is a match (and if there isn't, a limited real money test won;t cost you a tone of money).
Good to hear. Your results in SIM will then be a lot closer to reality. But I'd still be wary of the results.
I used to be more helpful at TS. I got beaten down by the paper trading trolls, so I don't post there much anymore. One troll actually shouted me down in a thread, only to apologize later via private PM. He wasn't man enough to apologize publicly. So, I post a lot more here, where things are civil.