Trades
Access global markets through copy trading, equities, and foreign exchange — with the tools and research to trade them well.
Copy Trading
Copy trading is a method of trading in which investors, often beginners or those lacking time to actively manage their investments, automatically copy the trades of more experienced traders. Here's how it typically works:
The appeal is straightforward. Rather than research and execute every trade personally, an investor delegates the decision to someone whose record and approach they have chosen to follow, and the platform mirrors that person's orders at a proportional size. For people who lack the time to watch markets closely, or who are still learning how positions are constructed, it offers a way to take part without making every call alone.
It is not a shortcut around risk, and it is not a form of managed investing. The decisions remain someone else's, the outcomes are shared rather than assured, and choosing a trader is itself a judgement that has to be made carefully. Understanding how the process works, and where it can go wrong, matters more than the convenience of delegating.
How copy trading works
- 01
Selection of Traders
Investors choose experienced traders to copy. This selection is usually based on various factors such as past performance, risk tolerance, trading strategy, etc.
- 02
Allocation of Funds
Investors allocate a certain amount of funds to copy the selected traders. The proportion of funds allocated to each trader can vary based on the investor's preferences.
- 03
Automatic Replication
Once the funds are allocated, trades executed by the selected traders are automatically replicated in the investor's account. This means that whenever the selected trader opens or closes a position, a corresponding trade is executed in the investor's account.
- 04
Risk Management
Some copy trading platforms offer risk management tools that allow investors to set parameters such as maximum trade size, maximum loss per trade, etc. This helps investors control their risk exposure.
- 05
Monitoring and Adjustment
Investors can monitor the performance of the traders they are copying and make adjustments to their portfolio accordingly. They can add or remove traders based on their performance and changing market conditions.
What the process asks of you
Delegating the trade does not remove the work; it moves it earlier. The time saved on execution is spent instead on selection, because the quality of a copy-trading account depends first on the traders behind it. Reading a record properly means asking how a result was produced, not only how large it was: the strategy used, the markets it was applied to, the size of the positions taken, and the drawdowns that accompanied the gains.
Monitoring is the other half of the task. A trader can change approach, increase risk, or simply have a run that stops working, and none of that is visible unless positions are reviewed with some regularity. Adding and removing traders, rebalancing the amount allocated to each, and deciding when to step back are all investor decisions, and they are not shared with the person being copied.
Copy trading compared with direct trading
The table below sets the two approaches side by side. Neither column describes a better outcome; they describe who carries the decisions, where the effort falls, and what each method exposes you to.
| Aspect | Copy trading | Direct trading |
|---|---|---|
| Who makes the decisions | A trader you choose; their orders are replicated in your account | You, for every position you hold |
| Ongoing time | Lower once set up, but choosing and monitoring traders still takes attention | Higher: positions must be researched, opened, watched and closed |
| Where the skill sits | In judging traders and strategies rather than markets | In research, execution and risk management across the instruments you trade |
| Control over positions | Limited to choosing, weighting and removing the traders you follow | Direct: you decide what is held and when it is sold |
| How losses arise | From the copied trader's decisions, replicated in your account | From your own decisions and the market's moves |
| Visibility | Depends on what the platform discloses about the trader and their positions | Your positions and the reasoning behind them are known to you |
| Spreading exposure | Can be divided across several traders with different approaches | Depends on the number and variety of positions you hold |
| What is guaranteed | Nothing: gains and losses are both replicated | Nothing: gains and losses are both yours |
Risks to understand before you copy a trader
Copy trading transfers decisions, not risk. Every position the copied trader opens is opened in your account too, which means their losses are replicated as faithfully as their gains. If a trader takes a large position and the market moves against it, the same loss appears in your account in proportion to the funds you have allocated.
Leverage makes that exposure larger than the capital committed, and it works in both directions: it magnifies a loss at least as readily as a gain. A run of losses can reduce an account substantially, and a strategy that has performed well in the past can stop working without warning. Past performance is not a reliable guide to future results, and a strong recent record is not proof of skill rather than luck; it may simply be a period in which the approach suited the market.
Replication is also not exact. The price at which a copied trade is filled can differ from the trader's own fill, because orders travel through different systems and arrive at slightly different times. Position sizes are rounded, some instruments may be unavailable in your account, and a copied trade can be delayed or rejected when markets are fast or thin. Those differences usually look small, but they accumulate, and they can work against you.
There are further risks that belong to the arrangement rather than the market. A trader can change strategy, increase risk, or go quiet without telling you, and the only defence is the monitoring you do yourself. The platform that carries the trades sits between you and the market, so its reliability, its terms and its treatment of client money all matter. The risk controls a platform offers, such as position limits, stop levels and a maximum loss per trade, are constraints on behaviour rather than guarantees: they can reduce the size of a loss, but they cannot prevent one.
Before allocating funds, it is worth asking whether you can afford the loss of the capital committed, whether the trader's approach matches your own tolerance for drawdown, and how you would react if the account fell sharply. Copy trading suits some investors and not others, and no amount of process removes the possibility of loss.
Where copy trading fits
Copy trading is one way to take a view on markets, and it sits alongside the more direct routes described elsewhere in this section. Stock trading is the business of buying and selling shares of listed companies, where the research and the decisions are your own. Forex trading covers the currency markets, which trade continuously through the week and carry their own risks from leverage and volatility. Each approach asks for different amounts of time, skill and attention, and none of them is a substitute for the others.
If you would rather research and manage positions yourself, begin with stock trading; if currency markets are what interest you, see forex trading. Both pages set out how those markets work and what to weigh before taking a position.