Does copy trading work ? Please advice

I’m interested in a social trading. I like the idea of copying trades of other traders.

I have found several platforms on the Internet and tested them.

etoro.com – it looks good, but they are broker. I don’t want to open another trading account with them.
zulutrade.com – they have a good choice of traders, but a lot of negative reviews.
mydigitrade.com – it looks much more professional than other platforms.

Does anyone have any experience of trading with them? Please share your opinion.

Up on this please, really interested in copy trading too

I believe it does. Social trading is still going to become big…and systems will improve over time to come.

There are several ways to copy trades. Some brokers offer direct copy accounts(look at Roboforex) where you can open a copy account and trades get passed to your account directly…like an anonymous PAM/MAM setup. I haven’t tested it but see no reason why it will not be successful.

The system type and order processing is critical. If you have a scalper that takes 1 or pips profit using market orders, then it will not be suitable for copying

Here is an example…at the risk of breaking the forum rules here(mods, this does go directly to the subject matter)…I am running a little experiment on an EA that I created that I believe is very well suited to copy trading

Here is a link to myfxbook master account :-

CF_Trend V1.5 beta System by compuforexpamm | Myfxbook

Here is where I am copying my own account :-

Signal copy test System by compuforexpamm | Myfxbook

As a matter of interest, the copy account is not the same broker as the master, which is not ideal, but you can see it is ok…

Here I have a friend who is running a copy but with the same broker…

FP-Market signals System by Stoneydxb | Myfxbook

A couple of points to note, this system uses stop orders and TP/SL to exit trades…no market orders.
It is a demo account but I believe it will work just as well with a live account and I will prove this in the coming months.
The signal slippage on this system is insignificant. Slippage from you broker would be a different story but if you are with the same broker as the master account you should not have to worry.
The system uses the metaquotes(MQL4.com) website as a signal service.
When you look at the system, note things like the average win/loss per trade(pips). You will see that the more pips average, the more suited the system will be for copying.

The final and best form of social trading is to find a decent trader who runs a PAM/MAM setup with a reputable broker.

A final word, the copying/technical aspects can work, but no matter how good the copying is, if you choose a bad trader to copy you are going to lose. Therefore, choice of trader is the most critical aspect of social trading. Learn to identify what kinds of trading will blow your account(martingale, high risk, etc).

Kenny,
Im surprised that, although youve been a member here almost 9 years, you only have demo accounts to show your trading, and the oldest of these is only 2 months old.
Do you not have a live account showing how well you’re doing?
:slight_smile:
Do you have any suggestions on how newbies can differentiate between the good, legitimate traders to copy, and the spammers who seem to proliferate sites like etoro?

1 Like

Hi Carlos,

Of course I have some live accounts :-)…if you follow the links to the demo accounts and from there navigate your way to my profile at myfxbook, you will be able to find the live accounts. They are also new because I stepped out of forex for a while…too much stress for too little return. It is still just a hobby, but who knows…maybe I will make some real money one day.

I used my demo accounts here simply to prove the concept. I will do the same in due course with one of my live accounts…

As to the guys to copy, Just have a good read through some of the threads at myfxbook. Many people are there trying to sell their system whether it be EA’s, signals or managed services. Reading through the threads, there are many guys willing to rip the system apart and reveal flaws…there is much to be learnt.

I keep on referring to myfxb simply because in order to analyse a trader, you need a site that tabulates his trading statistics. Once you have looked at enough systems and have an idea what is happening, you can start looking at what the brokers are offering.

Common issues to look for are traders hiding some trading info, especially trade size. Pay attention to things like drawdown, average pips won/lost per trade. They also provide a sharpe ratio, which one doesn’t have to understand but it gives a snapshot of risk vs return…the higher the better.

Hello all, i recently joined the forum. I use social trading on several of my accounts with a fair amount of success. In addition to what KennyHubbard said I have found it good to weigh the average win/lose pips against the win/lose percentage. Also looking at the style of trading and techniques used to make sure they arent too risky or conservative for your account.

I don’t understand copy trading.

Presumably there are reasons why anyone would not wish to trade independently. But wouldn’t these be the self-same reasons to not copy-trade?

Some people have banks or investment funds to trade their money. My guess is that those outnumber copy traders.

Copy trading is a great concept imo but the copier needs to decide wisely where to put his money.

Nowadays Etoro has strict rules for popular investers (those that can be copied) and the highest degree of them needs to have deposited 20k so copiers know they are not trusting their funds to someone with a penny account

I’ve got to respect your personal circumstances - other commitments and different aptitudes can make active trading impractical for many people. But if that’s the case, why forex? Surely there will be lower risk passive investments available.

Even then, I have to say if you don’t understand how your money is working, then you cannot have a picture of how much risk you are taking on. And if you don’t know how much risk you’re up against, you could be facing the risk of total loss, you just don’t know it yet.

Hi everyone, I’m new in the forum.
I will share my experience and I hope is useful for someone!
I think the idea of copy trading is so nice for people that can’t spend all day trading, studying, being aware of the market…
In my case i started to try copy trading 3 months ago and I’m getting some benefits. They keypoint is that you don’t expect to put 500$ in your account and have 1000$ in one month. 5% to 10% is what you can expect to get if you don’t want to risk your savings.
About platforms I recommend etoro to start, then zulutrade and when you have more knowledge you’re ready to taste every platform.
To sum up, try etoro first with a demo or real account, if you don’t choose too risky traders you will see you get profits soon. There are some pages online that have rankings which are more useful that the ones you have on the official pages.

And please if you open an account share which traders are giving you best profits!!

5-10% in 20 years is some good amount of Money.

You are using mql5 community or a private one? Where foi found it??

Copy trading is based on a false assumption - that the only way to make money in trading is by trading intra-day on short time-frames.