I have been wondering why would people want to follow signal providers ?
I know a very simple answer to that question obviously easy money or so they thought. Nothing is easy and nothing comes for free. There’ll always going to cost whether its monetary or non.
If you can’t even put effort to understand the whole thing and during the process make mistakes and learn from them to eventually formulate a consistently profitable strategy why are you even in ? Just to make money ? I’m not being arrogant I just can’t understand the reasoning behind copying someone else’s trade signals.
I don’t see it as a sustainable solution for anyone who wants to eventually trade for a living. You have to know your game if you want to trade for a living. You can’t be copying someone else’s signals.
PS: Apologies if I’m posting this in a wrong section thought i’d get more responses from senior and newbie traders alike if I posted here
One of the things I was considering when I first started looking at the forex, was applying the same logic as I did as a sports bettor, using a handicapping service. A trader told me make an effort to learn the basics and you won’t need one. I would like to expand on that 100% correct advice for me, to include, if you don’t understand the basics, then how do you decide on not only whether you want to use a service, but how would make a decision on which one.
Some traders love to trade for a lot of reasons, including the ones that think I have a great job or own a profitable business and I don’t want to trade for a living but I would like to find something that doesn’t take a lot of effort and I can get better returns than a mutual fund or bank account.
So it depends on what you’re trying to get from signal services providers. No matter why you’re coming to the forex to pick a good signal service provider you at least need to have a basic understanding. Other wise when the signal service provider says because of the Secret ******** advanced technique we use we are able to give our clients consistent profit; or even during the last devastating recession our clients made a profit; (or my personal favorite) "Imagine the probabilities if you blah blah, our integrated service.
Before anyone buys anything to do with the forex, they should remember to consider the most used paragraph attached to everything and that’s the “Before you proceed Nothing in this can construed has a guarantee” clause
I can give you my perspective why I started following the traders on zulutrade. 1) because I cant trade myself, and every time I tried I lost money, and 2) I saw that zulutrade is profitable and the model small time and small account - small steady returns worked for me. These are my reasons. Anybody else?
As a signal provider for zulu I will give you my take…
People are greedy and want easy money. As someone else mentioned most people cannot trade successfully themselves is another reason. Being a provider I get to see my followers account balance’s and you would be shocked how many get margin called because of their greed.
I once had a follower tell me I was not making enough for him. Well, sorry but that’s not how trading works my greedy friend.
Also using signal providers can break up your risk. If you are trading and have a bad run, but your also following 5 other people and 3 of them have a good run then that can offset the losses you made on your own decisions.
Its not easy money to follow signal providers. You need to understand what they trade and how that would fit into your portfolio. Its no use following 5 signals that all follow the same process and just amplify your risk. You want signal providers which trade short term, long term, etc.
Some of the best advice I was told to find an expert in anything you do so you can learn from them and become an expert yourself. By looking at signal providers and understanding their trades you can also learn to be a good trader.
As always greed is where people lose out because they over leverage and risk too much.
I don’t know what is the deal with Zulutrade or any other signal provider, but there is one thing what I can say here: Those traders who are not able to trade on their own and paying for signals, they will never succeed in forex trading. As long are there people who are looking and paying for signals, there’s always going to be a signals providers.
I fully agree with you on that note. If you want to do this for a living take it seriously. And the saying goes give a man a fish feed him for a day , teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
But like Darknight says people want easy money. If only they realize there’s no such thing as easy money.
So based on the theory people are writing here … investing with or following warren buffett is a stupid idea. Who would want to follow his stock selections ? Apparently following an expert is a bad idea and we are doomed to failure.
Experts are experts for a reason. They are good at what they do.
But 95% of forex signal providers are scammers, tricksters, or novices. They use martingale money management to climb to the top of the ladder. They don’t understand risk. But if you can track down the other 5% of signal providers who are good and then narrow down those to the top few who are consistently good at picking forex moves then you are onto a winning strategy.
At the same time you follow their moves and try and learn why they took a trade. By studying the experts selections you can become an expert yourself over time as you gain experience.
Here is a link to my journal. My EA follows signal providers (but a bit more complicated than that. It reads web sites, forums, etc and comes up with a set of ratings on forex selections and the direction of stocks). its similar to rating a currency and giving it a profitability rating and a likelihood of movement and direction rating. My EA is not short term but can hold trades for a short period of time if it so desires.
There are problems with signals but I think its a good theory.
For instance if you have 100 people in a close knit community. Lets say they spend 8 hours a day trading. Why not have 10 of the top people trading, and the 90 people can spend their time doing something else? A lot of people go into trading to get out of working 30-40 hours a week and simply end up replacing their boss with another one. Signal services and other providers free up time.
I don’t disagree with you. Unfortunately, tons of followers fall into the trap, once seeing a trader winning they open the margin to their account to like 200% and then start actually expecting miracles. We all know this is not how it works. Not even close. I never follow with more than 3 trades copied and not more than 30-40% of my account. Always on zuluguard.
That is correct Dima! Good for the nice observation and account management!
I would say the biggest difference that makes zulutrade stands out is that followers are actually winning - the platform is designed like this that makes all parties win at the end.
They probably come closest to the “get rich quick” mantra that brokers usually promise. As mentioned by others, not all those who pursue forex trading are in it to be consistently profitable.
Some just like to earn a little extra on top of what they’re already getting. Even better if they can earn more and faster through following the “experts.” Kinda like leaving it to your brokers to trade your stocks for you. The risk is if they followed a scammer. Then forex trading gets more bad rep
capital protection is a must! and zuluguard does help around. The platform gives also other tools like reverse trading as well as risk taken indicator that helps out along the way to reduce risk taking and help improve account management.
