Market Replay: Risk-Free Practice Simulator

You've learned to calculate risk and position size — and now it's natural to want to get onto a live market as fast as possible, to test it all with your own hands. I get it, I was just as eager myself. And that's exactly why I avoided the simulator for years: it seemed like the simulator was "not a real market," which meant it was useless. You have to learn on the real thing, I thought.

Well, that was exactly the mistake. Market Replay in ATAS isn't a set of drawn candles or a generated animation. It's server-side historical data: the exact same trades and the exact same Level II order book that actually went through the exchange on the chosen day. Put simply, you see precisely the Footprint and the Volume Profile a trader sitting with this instrument back then would have seen. The only difference from real time is that it already happened, and you can rewind it.

Sounds like exactly what you need. All that's left is figuring out how to turn this time machine on — and this is where a lot of people freeze up.

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Launching Replay: four steps

⚠️ Important: In the next lesson you'll get homework assignments that require using Market Replay. Study the instructions below carefully.

1. Open Replay and select a module. Click Replay in the main ATAS window. Select the chart you want to train with; for this module, a single Chart with the Footprint and Volume Profile preset from Module 2 is enough.
2. Choose the Replay mode. For a single chart, ATAS offers Select bar, Select Period, and Select Date. Use Select Date when you want to replay a full completed trading day from the homework. The current calendar day cannot be selected.
3. Choose the market data type. The default mode is suitable for most chart practice. Use the table below if you need a different level of detail.
4. Click Play — and the selected market segment comes alive. You control the speed: watch the first run at 1×, real-time pace, and run a repeat faster. Pause stops playback so you can study a cluster. When you're done, use Go to Real Time to leave Replay and return the platform to real-time mode.

Data mode	What it gives you	When to use it
Candles	candle-based replay for longer chart practice and general volume analysis	for most assignments in this module — a good starting point when full market depth is not required
Ticks	trade-by-trade movement without full market depth	when you need real tick-by-tick trade flow but not the full DOM
Ticks and DOM	trades plus full market-depth data	when you specifically need SmartDOM, Heatmap, liquidity, or detailed Level II analysis

In the homework, you'll get a set of specific dates and trading instruments to drill patterns and setups on.

⚠️ Important: While Replay is on, the platform substitutes the system clock — real-market charts don't update during this time. Keep your Replay sessions and your work on a live account separate: once you've practiced on history, turn off the simulator, then go back to the live market.

The simulator is set up, access is confirmed — but turning on Replay isn't the same as starting to actually train. There's a way to stare at the screen for hours and come away with nothing, and there's a way to get three real days' worth of benefit out of a single run. The difference comes down to one simple rule.

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The run algorithm: hypothesis → action → conclusion

Replay without a hypothesis is just a movie. Replay with a hypothesis is training. The only difference is whether you go into the day with a specific question or just watch. That's why every assignment in this module is built on the same algorithm, and it's simple.

1. Read the assignment — exactly what you're looking for on this particular day. For example, "a POC retest confirmed by Footprint."
2. Start the day and watch it at real-time pace, without fast-forwarding: peeking ahead to see how it all ends is off-limits — otherwise this stops being decision training.
3. Lock in your decision. Once the situation from the assignment shows up, slow the playback down to 1× and answer yourself honestly: am I seeing what I was looking for or not, would I enter here or pass on it.
4. Open a trade. Replay gives you access to a demo Replay Account — always open a position and set a stop-loss and take-profit. This fully cements the whole process, and in live trading, at the moment of doubt, this is exactly the skill that will help you act.
5. Fast-forward and draw a conclusion — did your read of the situation hold up, or not.

💡 Tip: Keep a notebook and, after every run, do a short self-review: did you break your entry rules, and what led to it. Word it plainly, exactly as it was — "I was confident the pattern would work out" or "price was already at the right spot, it should have bounced." Not a note just to check a box, but an honest breakdown of why you hit the button at that exact moment.

This is exactly what will show whether there was a strategy behind your trades or just a string of random hits — and these same statistics are exactly where the conversation about risk management in the module's last lesson will start.

The algorithm's in place, the simulator's turned on. All that's left is seeing what this algorithm actually looks like in practice: it's one thing to read five steps, another to walk through them for a whole day and not lie to yourself on step four. That's why, in the next lesson, we'll go through one day together — from hypothesis to writing down the conclusion — and after that you'll get a list of specific dates and windows for each case we covered in Module 3. From there, you're on your own.