Copy trading anyone? Social forex networks are spreading around the web lately , currensee , etoro , zulutrade , what do you think guys?
I’m using etoro and yes I’m making profits but I’ve just found this post on reddit and its scared the crap out of me. I hope you find it as good as i did.
Summary
If you go off across the internet searching for stories of ZuluTrade, you’ll find it all: Love, Tragedy, Loss, Success, and of course countless encounters of Spam. When you boil the entire system down, to just the nuts and bolts you are really left with a valid product. The issue comes in presentation, they sell you a get-rich-quick-scheme, and your brain scams you.
ZuluTrade can be used successfully, but it takes patience, logical judgment, and most of all, a great deal of overhead. If you use the tool correctly, simply as a tool, it can be profitable. But if you don’t heed all the warnings, and simply throw money into an account and hope - you might as well throw the money away instead.
Providers
This is really the most critical area, trust me, the site will make it easy - it’s not. Selecting the proper providers is more than a little bit of work, it takes time. Worse, you are never finished, you need to continually reevaluate your chosen providers and continually change them as situations progress. Not selecting the proper providers is going to be the number one way to get burned.
This is when the “presentation” scam comes in to play. When you visit ZT for the first time, you’ll be presented with this “Top” list of providers. You’ll browse their profiles and notice that they have hundreds upon hundreds of successful trades over the last year. You’ll notice that they are making money hand-over-fist. You’ll literally see dollar signs. Are they real: Of course. But, and there is always a catch, the part you fail to remember in this time of sheer monetary-bliss, is that these are past performances! And as the site states, not indicative of future performance (duh).
But none of that is the tricky part, none of that is the soon-to-be-evident scam. What you don’t notice, being new to the site, is that the signal providers you are currently viewing, claimed to be the “top,” were nobodies yesterday. That’s right, they may not have even been on the top 100, let alone anywhere near the homepage. Nope, instead their was a different set of top providers, a group just as appeasing as the one you are looking at. Where did they go, you ask? Simple, down, very far down, the rankings. Why, you ask? Also simple, they imploded or exploded - losing much of their followers money along the journey. It truly is amazing, to see so many accounts gain so much over a period of time, only to eventually be Margin Called, left with almost nothing. Tragic for sure.
This fallacy is an issue. Are their decent signal providers: absolutely. Are there amazing signal providers: resounding yes. But you are not going to find them in the top list, at least not often. Instead ZT presents you with the signal-provider-du-jour, and you jump on to a sinking ship with nothing but Benjamin’s blurring your vision. Find providers who trade using sound economical logic, not the person who is running an EA, and seems infallible.
Drawdown and the 10 Pips
Most of the providers use an EA. The odd part is how strikingly similar each EA and therefore provider is to one and other. This causes great issue, as when one falls, almost all of them do (which is why you see a mass change of top providers approximately every month). Stay away from the fools, who run an EA, accepting a ~100 pip DD, only to close for a ~10 pip profit. You are continually risking a large amount of money, and in the best case, earning very little (and after the spreads, its worse, sometimes you lose anyway).
100% and the Dreaded EA
Most of these top providers will surprise you, their EA system will have a 100% win ratio. That’s right, 100%. As in they have never, not even once, taken a lose. But read the sidebar: Remember, if it is too good to be true, it likely is! Stay safe out there.
The issue here is much like the DD. The EA is set to refuse a lose, its actually the reason the DD is so high, the EA will literally wait FOREVER for the price to return. That might be okay if you have the margin to cover the DD, but at some point, you won’t. I’ve seen accounts in the negatives of thousands of pips (DD) on a trade.
If the account has 100% winnings, its clear the trader is unwilling to take a lose, and this is a bad way to play the economic markets. Its common sense, if the market isn’t going the way you want, need, predict, you get out as early as possible, “cutting your loses.” Don’t forget that lesson, you won’t want to learn it the hard way.
Max Positions and the Open Length
Providers are paid per-position, losing, winning, it doesn’t matter, its in their best interest to open positions. Don’t misunderstand, they are paid proportionally to their following base, but they need to open positions to get paid. This sometimes encourages providers to open a large amount of small positions, quickly. I’ve seen as much as 30, more frequent than you’d think. Mix in strategies like we’ve seen above and you have a huge receipt for disaster: All your money is leveraged, and this provider doesn’t mind going in the negative a few hundred pips.
Stick to providers who average a few trades max, I’d say around two. These people will tend to be less “cowboys” and might actually make some profitable trades, instead of getting your a margin call, right out of the gate. Also keep in mind how long they keep the positions open, commonly the 100% strategies will include very long times periods for a given trade - just waiting for that losing trade to turn around.
The Theory/Conspiracy
I have no evidence of this, but myself and plenty of others included think the following is afoot at ZT. There is a group, not even a large one, that games/scams the ZT system. ZT continues to pay the bills, so they generally let said shanghais slide, worse they present the data in a fashion that facilities this situation. This group simply creates and fodders numerous accounts, at all times. Each month they are starting dozens of new accounts, and continuing to run their 100% 100DD:10. Once their “top” ranking accounts implode, they already have the next set of top providers lined up ready to take over the previous positions, now with a nice set of time at/near 100% winnings.
The Sweet Spot
You can game the system too, make this entire venture profitable. Get away from the best ranking providers, find some traders who are manually trading, better if they are trading real money (verses demos - a common thing, that’s right, the SP has no vested interest in the trade). Find someone who has proper risk-to-reward-ratios (1:3 or 1:4). Find someone who will clearly take a lose when needed. Someone who doesn’t keep positions open for days, weeks, months, just to turn that losing position around. Find a real trader, who is taking the time to provide signals, they do exist, and sadly they are shown little gratitude.
TL;DR;
ZuluTrade is not a scam, but the people involved might just scam you. Find real traders, avoid the get-rich-quick setups, they are fake. And remember, this isn’t auto-pilot, it still takes work.
Thank you for the great info! I am planning try on zulutrade or zipsignals, but u make me want to join zulutrade now. I don’t mind spending time and effort to find good and real provider, as long as they trade well and slippage is not much!
Very great info indeed Evolutionistic. Zulutrade seems like a good concept but everyone must be carefull when choosing a provider.
I’m always weary of signal providing services who use their own tracking/stats system for reporting. If they use a 3rd party stats tracking provider (such as Myfxbook, mt4i, etc.) I feel much more comfortable.
I dunno where you find this, Evolutionsic, but I can say it is quite a bunch of c*** and wrong information.
The overall product is very good, of course one need to have at least one brain cell working in order to use it. First, there is ranking algorithm indicating which SP is worth following and which isnt; if this is not enough one can always enter and copy other’s follower successful settings. SPs are compensated only when they close a positive monthly PnL (with no carry over open trades) and additionally dd/trade should not exceed 700 pips loss. (this is all on the website you can read the signal provider agreement and yourself) You can link any broker you wish for and of course you willing to stick with (some charge quite a commission ) but this is workable and last but not least, their support is quite the best - they have been there answering to each stupid question i ask 24/7 …I am using other brokers support services(names doesnt matter here) and comparing this one is the best support i get. As you say it does require some work of your own, not tremedous I’d say, but overall the return you will get for the invested little time is tremendous. I am having a 5K account and monthly rebates I get from following is of about 1000 usd …so, in 5 m I already had my initial investment covered and double by not even closing an year. Imo, it is the easiest made money…there are day i even forget to open my account.
@TyeWfx thx for sharing that with us , you seem do be doing very well in zulutrade. But i dont understand your rage about the post above, cause its actually very positive about the zulutrade service. Maybe when it was written this rule you are mentioning wasnt introduced , but apart from that the post of Evolutionsic was very well written and in favour of zulutrade.
Me neither ;p
The article basically states that zulutrade is a good service but some people involved (signal providers ) are scammers , which is preety normal if you have 1000+ providers registered on your site. Searching for comparison between zulutrade and etoro i found a great blog , google copytraders and you will find a uk site where a guy is comparing the two services with great analysis.
hey guys, thanks for the comments.
I am fed up seeing so many negative reviews lately that come mainly from scammers, or angry providers that want money for recless trading, so with yours i was left a bit puzzled. kindly excuse me being overreacting. thats why wanted to clarify that the service is really good (and i tend to believe that). sivested, i saw the article - quite good and to the point description it had there.
Are you an old user of zulutrade? Would you reccomend this service to an amateur forex trader? What tips can you give about selecting the providers?
not that old actually, but for some time yes.
i use too strategies so to say - ranking and alchemy settings to get providers. Use top 5 and then another five from what other users find profitable.
so, which one did you choose?
I’m on a demo right now switching between different providers , watching their strategies , my latest ones are Yamato FX ver.A and yf68 , they are doing quite good for me.
Interesting choice:))
Good luck…hope these SPs bring you lots of pips:)
I am a bit more conservative and stick for the time being with FCC 
as most of the followers do 
So, any new traders to follow? are these guys viable now:Yamato FX ver.A and yf68 ??
Not ever in the top 10 …xmmm I need to choose others…
Hello there,
now these guys are old news, hope you didn’t follow them.
Look at #DailyBot SSI - EURO, EUReka V, and arda1988. but overall, try to find traders that trade from live accounts, not always, but they tend to be more secure! 
imo of course.
These days, most decent traders would have their performance displayed for the world to see, and better yet, for anyone to copy.
Copy trading is one service from many broker now which with copy trading they can copy trading from leader, but finding good copy trader is not easy, usually investor trader will looking and ask question on forum to get information before using service there are some trader using copy trading on mql5 and some might using on zulutrade.