What is a Forex Trade Copier? Until about a month or so ago, I did not have any idea. The good news is I found someone who has been researching them for several years and has given me the inside scoop, and I want to pass this experience along to all of you. So, what is a trade copier? The easiest way to explain it is a trader enters his Forex trades and they are then sent to all of the others accounts to copy or mirror his trading. Unfortunately, like with trading in general almost nobody has been profitable longer term with acceptable risk. Far too many trade dangerous systems that use martingale or averaging that adds to losing positions.
There are really two types of “copiers” for clients to consider. There are manual software copiers popular mostly for MT4, and Forex like I am using which allow for intimate personal control of how you want to execute the trades the Master Trader is sending over: things like trade size or risk management. Then there are mirroring technologies offered by popular websites (e.g. Tradency.com, Zulutrade.com, Collective2.com, Rentasignal.com, and Metatrader247.com). These usually want you to open an account with a specific broker or a group of brokers, so that the signals will go to your broker account. They also mark up the spread to pay the trader!
Copiers and/or trade duplication in all their forms are VERY popular. The desire for people to leverage already successful traders is huge. The statistics for profitable traders is low and most everyone knows this. So any trader who has a profitable system with good risk management and who offers their services through some kind of trade duplication technology will be very attractive to potential clients.
Copiers do have latency, though, so they aren’t always successful for every type of system. Scalping systems of 8 or 10 pips won’t work well if you don’t have the same broker. Only “BLOCK trading” with the same broker would be guaranteed to work for that kind of scalping system. On the other hand any system that has larger targets/stops than scalping (like the UST or One Day Swing Trades or Keltner Bells) works very well using an Internet copier.
The manual copiers like I am using which run locally on the clients MT4 require the system to be running 24/5. So this often means it is best to get a VPS so you know that your MT4 will always be connected to the internet to receive the trader’s trades. With some services like Zulutrade, this is all handled on their website backend and you don’t need to worry about running anything locally or on a VPS. The biggest downside with services like Zulutrade, is often you have limited choices in broker and they mark up spreads.
Finally, another great thing about trade copiers is that your results can be published and verified for the world to see. There is a site mt4i.com that posts trade results from other traders using trade copiers. The trader can delay the posting of the trades, by 12 or 24 hours.
This way, people who are not paying for the signals can’t see them in real time and follow them.
So, we will continue to test out trade copiers and very soon you might see us release a trade copier type of service. As many of you know, I have been calling live VIP trades using our Ultimate Swing Trader system for the past year and a half. Soon, all my trades can be sent out live and posted on a 3rd party website for verification. Pretty neat huh? We will keep you posted and remember, if you want to play with a trade copier and follow another traders signals, make sure you Demo Trade it for a while to be safe!