Hi everyone. I was wondering if anyone has experience of copying a “pro’s” trades and if this is a good idea. I’ve searched the threads, but didn’t find anything at Babypips. One guy that seems to have been around for while is Matt Sharpe - he runs a few subscription services, promotes his system (called System 17) and also facilitates access to his and two others’ trades. His traders appear to be achieving an ROI of 5-8% pm.
As much as I would like to do my own trades in the end, it does make sense to copy those of someone with a proven track record - or does it? It’s like standing on the shoulder of a winner at the blackjack table in a way, I suppose.
I guess its ok, as long as you are on the safe side, there are other factors that can affect your trading if you copy pros, but if its to improve then its good.
In my view trade copying is not trading - someone with no understanding of the market whatsoever could sign up to a copying service. So I would not even view copying as part of the journey toward becoming a trader.
It is not for me, but I know that many like it, all I am saying is that I would view it as investing , speculating, whatever, rather than trading. I have seen a few threads on here dealing with the subject - Zulutrade seems popular - which you might like to check out but for me it is simply not trading so is of only tangental relevance at best to the bulk of the discussions on BP.
While reading about a platform may be insightfull , you wont understand many things until you try it out yourself. Open a demo account in zulu and then you will see if this platform is for you or not.
Copying trades can be a solution for people who do not have enough time to learn how to trade by themselves. Even EA trading requires a lot of efforts and knowledge.
But if you have a friend who is a good trader and he can provide you with his investor password then why not to take an advantage of it?
From my experience copying trades may be useful for almost all kinds of traders:
BEGINNERS: If you are the beginner then the risk of copying trades from Pro trader is lower than the risk which you take when you are trading by yourself (you know the statistics that 95% of beginners lose money). And when you are copying trades from Pro trader you can monitor all trades and get some lessons about the risk management from your signal provider.
You can try Copying trades with this free tool and see it how it really works: http://forums.babypips.com/newbie-island/48740-free-forex-trade-copier.html
Successful Traders: Ok, if you have enough experience and your reached the point when you can earn money from your trading then you may want to:
manage one more trading account of yourself on other broker
manage your wife’s/husband’s/friend’s account
copy signals of other traders to one of your account as an addition (if you are a good trader then i believe that you will get to know other good traders as well)
In this case Copying will do your job so you will not have to open the same trades on all accounts, this will be done automatically.
Here is a tool for Copying trades professionally with different adjustments and filters: Download Forex Copier Pro
PRO Traders: Of course if you are Pro trader then you will not be interested in copying somebody’s trades into your account but you may be interested in copying your trades into the accounts of your clients. So if you have for example 10 people who are paying you for managing their accounts then you do not have to take care of each account independently and you can take care of one account only and your trades will be duplicated on accounts of your clients automatically.
Here is a tool which allows to manage many customer’s accounts: Download Forex Copier Multiaccount
no, trading in its initial definition of the word is understanding the markets either by fundamentals or technical anlysis (both equally strong in their own realm) historically performed with people with knowledge (institional banks, brokerage houses, investment firms ) where the zulutrade offers an unique (in terms of the times it was created) out-of-the-box approach to retailng forex trading, so to say, where regular people that have no idea about forex(or investment analysis) and obviously no substantial equity to even partisipate in mutual funds actually got access to it. You know the micro rule with demand and supply - the market will eventually put itself in equilibruim and fill the gaps where there are niche opportunities for profit. With the help of technology this is easier done - but also the forex trading become even more fragmented. Both tradings are good when they cover the corresponding needs - if they dont there is no reason to actually trade - in the same way, I do not do manual trading, because its time, fund and knowledge consuming for me.
To my mind, trade copying can be beneficial at all levels of experience. For the novice, it can be a great way to learn how someone else puts their trades together, assuming they give you their reasoning for the trade rather than just signals.
For intermediate traders, it’s always good to keep an open mind and see how others trade - you can always learn something, even if it’s just that the trades you’re copying suck!
And for the more experienced trader, it’s a good way of having another set of eyes on the market, alerting you to setups that you might otherwise miss.
So I think it’s something you should investigate, with the caveat that you should ask to see the trade journal of anyone you’re about to give money to. If they’re selling a trading service they should be happy for you to scrutinise their trade history. Walk away from anyone who hesitates to show you their records.
Take this one trader for instance: He never closes on a loss, but his DD is just too scary. You won’t see it from this extract, but some positions are open for 2 months!? If you had the margin and the gonads, you’d be up 25 000 pips since Feb’12, but at what potential cost?
Zulutrade has a bit different purpose. There you are sticked to a particular brokers and cannot freely manage your subscribers. On Zulutrade signal providers are earning money from brokers when they attract customers but with other Copying solutions (like the one which I mentioned) Signal Providers can earn money from subscription fees which they get from the subscribers.
I heard an instructor say once that the first thing he did was give out trade suggestions to his students including entrys, stops, and targets and even though the trades would have turned a profit overall, the students lost money because of management and psychological reasons.
I have heard and seen exactly the same phomenon, however bizarre it seems at first read. I have seen a group of people given a few trade ideas and very few convert them into winning trades, even though the trader giving the idea made good pips simply by doing what he had told the others, and was available to ask questions. In my view, this side of trading takes far more learning, practice and experience than does learning technical setups. By comparison, learning entry criteria is easy.
This what you are saying is incorrect.
Traders on zulutrade can have multiple accounts for the same trading strategy/s (and i have seen it), this is mostly in terms of spreads and executions and followers tend to experience high slippage across the brokers.
in terms of compensations traders are reimburst from zulutrade - i am not aware of the method -as i am a follower, but as far as i know compensations is somewhat linked to performance and followers.
to use zulutrade is FREE…both to followers and traders - meaning you link your trading account from your broker and starts following or sending the trades either way.
