How it works
You choose a trader from a leaderboard, allocate an amount, and their trades are opened in your account in proportion, with the same stops and targets. You can usually cap the risk per trade, set a maximum drawdown at which copying stops, and stop at any time. The provider is paid from your spread, a subscription, or a share of your profit.
What the leaderboard hides
- Survivorship: the traders you see are the ones who have not blown up yet.
- Risk: a 200 percent annual return usually came with drawdowns that would have stopped you copying long before the gain.
- Sample size: a few months of results are noise.
- Incentives: providers paid by volume are rewarded for trading often, not well.
If you copy anyway
- Look for at least a year of history, a maximum drawdown under 20 percent, and a strategy description that makes sense.
- Allocate a small amount and set a drawdown stop.
- Copy two or three uncorrelated providers rather than one.
- Treat it as an investment in someone else's discipline, and check it monthly like any other.
At prop firms
Copying a provider into a prop-firm account usually breaches the rules on account sharing and third-party trading. Read the terms before connecting anything.
Trading forex, CFDs and other leveraged products carries a high risk of losing money. This guide is general education, not advice.