Markets & data sources
The desk uses free public data feeds. Each asset shows its own status badge. We never call data real-time unless it is.
| Asset classes | Source | Timeliness | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crypto | Binance public market data (fallback: Coinbase Exchange public API) | Live, polled every ~5 seconds | Priced in USDT (Binance) or USD (Coinbase). 24/7. |
| US & ASX stocks, ETFs, indices, commodity futures, forex | Yahoo Finance chart data, fetched through this site’s own proxy | Delayed: typically ~15 min (US), ~20 min (ASX), ~10–15 min (futures); not guaranteed | Unofficial endpoint, can change or rate-limit without notice. Cached ~30–300 s. Orders are blocked while a market is closed. |
| Forex (daily fallback) | Frankfurter / ECB reference rates | End-of-day only | Chart only; no trading on end-of-day data. |
| If every feed fails | Simulated random-walk chart | Not real | Clearly labelled; trading disabled. |
Things to know
- Prices are not suitable for real trading decisions. They may be delayed, wrong or missing.
- Futures (commodities) are continuous front-month contracts, not spot prices. Indices are shown as points and are traded here as a simple unit position, like a CFD.
- Your virtual account is valued in dollars 1:1 with no FX conversion between AUD, USD and USDT.
- Free third-party data has its own terms. Yahoo Finance data is for personal use and its terms restrict redistribution; Binance and Coinbase public data is subject to their terms. See each provider’s current terms before relying on this site commercially.
Charts and TradingView widgets: what we use and why
- Desk charts use TradingView’s open-source Lightweight Charts library (Apache-2.0, vendored in this site, attribution kept). It only draws; we supply the data from the free feeds above, so every paper fill is priced from data we fetch and label.
- Market overview, economic calendar and heatmaps on the Tools pages are TradingView’s free embeddable widgets. They show TradingView’s data, keep TradingView’s logo and links (their terms require attribution to stay as designed, and removing it needs TradingView’s permission), can’t be read by our code, and so cannot feed the paper-trading engine. They load only after you click, because they contact TradingView.
- TradingView’s terms restrict commercial use of their services unless agreed separately. Review their widget documentation and policies before running paid sponsorships next to the widgets.