Follow traders, not tips
Choose a strategy on the strength of how it has actually traded, rather than on what somebody says it will do next.
Link your account to a strategy you have chosen and mirror its positions automatically — on the same execution and pricing you would get trading it yourself.
Copy trading links your account to a strategy you have chosen. When the trader behind it opens or closes a position, yours follows at the same time, in proportion to what you allocated.
Choose a strategy on the strength of how it has actually traded, rather than on what somebody says it will do next.
You decide what to allocate and can change it, pause it or detach from a strategy at any point — the account stays yours throughout.
Entries and exits mirror to your account automatically, so keeping up with a strategy does not mean watching a screen all day.
Copying a strategy runs on the same infrastructure as trading one yourself — the same execution, the same pricing and the same account. Nothing about it is a separate, lesser venue.
Open an accountThe questions worth having an answer to before you attach an account to somebody else's trading.
No. Copying links your account to a strategy; it does not give anyone access to it. You decide what to allocate, you can change or stop it whenever you like, and you can close a copied position yourself from your own terminal like any other. Deposits and withdrawals stay entirely yours.
It does not. A record shows what a strategy did in the conditions it has already met, not what it will do in the ones ahead — and a run of good months can be a run of luck as easily as skill. Copy trading spreads the work of trading, not the risk of it: the losses land in your account exactly as the gains do.
Your account takes its share of it, in the same proportion as it takes the winners. That is the reason to size an allocation as though the strategy will have a drawdown rather than hoping it will not, and to keep watching it after you set it up.
Yes, and spreading an allocation across several is usually a sounder starting point than putting it behind one. Bear in mind that two strategies trading the same instruments in the same direction are less diversified than they look — the positions can add up to a much larger bet than either one appears to be.
Enough to judge what you are following, yes. You do not have to find the trades, but you are the one deciding which strategy to back and how much to put behind it, and those are the decisions that determine the outcome.
Yes. Copied positions and your own sit side by side, and closing one has no effect on the other. Just remember that both draw on the same margin, so a busy strategy leaves less room for whatever you open by hand.
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