Pocket Broker: Copy Trading Explained

Copy trading mirrors other people's trades

Copying somebody else sounds like delegating the hard work, and in part it is, but it is worth pinning down what exactly moves across and what stays with you when the trade settles.

Copy trading means that, when another participant opens a position, your account opens an equivalent one automatically. The operator's home page lists trade copying among its trading types, alongside quick and digital trading, express trades and pending ones, and its site includes a social trading section.

The point that decides whether this suits you or not is short: what moves across is the decision, not the risk. The trade is executed in your account, with your money and at the moment somebody else chose. If the forecast is right, the contract pays a pre-defined percentage on the amount staked; if it is wrong, that amount is lost in full. That part is exactly the same as if you had decided yourself.

What the copier takes on

• Somebody else's risk with your own capital. Every replicated position is a position of yours, with your balance behind it.
• Somebody else's timing. You do not choose when it opens or under what condition, and it may be an hour at which you would not have traded.
• A risk tolerance that is not yours. Whoever trades in their own account does so with their own threshold of acceptable loss, which need not resemble yours.
• The absence of a reason. You see what was done, not why, so there is nothing left to learn from the trade.

None of this disqualifies it as a tool; it serves to pin down what you are signing up for. It is a way of executing somebody else's decisions in an orderly manner inside the terminal, and the mechanics of the underlying contract do not change at all. They are explained step by step in the guide on how the platform works.

Copying moves across the decision and the entry timing, never the risk: every replicated position opens with your money and a wrong forecast loses the amount staked in full.

Getting started follows clear steps

The general route is short and does not depend on the access channel, although the concrete screens change over time and it is worth looking at them in the terminal before assuming any detail.

The sequence below describes the general mechanics of copying, not one particular screen. The operator publishes no detailed manual of its social trading section, so the prudent thing is to walk through the current interface and confirm each step there.

1. Have the account ready. You trade from an account of your own; the sign-up is detailed in the guide to registering the account. The operator's Public Offer forbids a client from holding more than one trading account.
2. Enter the social trading section. That is where the terminal gathers the copying functions.
3. Choose who to follow. The most important decision and the one most worth reviewing calmly later on.
4. Set the amount. How much goes to the copying and how much is staked per replicated trade. The counters on the operator's home page publish a minimum trade amount of 1 USD.
5. Supervise it and be able to stop it. Check where the copying is interrupted before you switch it on, not after.

Testing it first on a virtual balance

The cheapest way to see how the function behaves is to walk through it without money of your own. The counters on the operator's home page publish a free demo account with 50,000 USD in virtual money, and the Google Play listings describe it as rechargeable; you can open the demo account and get familiar with the interface before deciding anything. The limit of that exercise is the usual one: what happens on a virtual balance does not anticipate what happens with real money. The practice account is detailed in the guide on the demo account.

An account of your own, the social trading section, the choice of who to follow, the amount per trade and a clear way to stop the copying: that is all, and it is worth confirming in the current terminal.

The method brings advantages

Delegating the decision solves a real problem for anyone starting out, and it is worth acknowledging what the method brings before going over what it costs.

The advantages of copying are of time and organization, not of result. Stated precisely, there are three.

Less analytical load

Anyone without the time or the judgement to read a chart can take part without building a system of their own first. That is the reason the function exists and it is legitimate, as long as it stays clear that it does not replace judgement: it postpones it.

Watching how another person trades

Seeing somebody else's sequence of trades, how often they trade, on which assets and at what relative size, is learning material a manual does not give. You make good use of it if you also write down what you see and compare it with what you would have done.

Spreading approaches

Following more than one participant keeps your whole trading from depending on a single way of deciding. It is a way of not concentrating everything in one criterion, with an important caveat: spreading across several people who trade the same product does not reduce the risk of the product, it only diversifies who decides.

Put another way: copying fits somebody who wants to take part while learning and does not fit somebody looking to delegate the risk. That second aim does not exist in this function or in any other on the platform.

Saved analysis, learning by observation and spreading across several criteria are the real advantages; none of the three is an improvement in result or a reduction of the risk.

The risks also exist

Replicating another person's trades means replicating their bad runs, their hasty decisions and their tolerance for loss as well, all of it charged to your balance.

The risks of copying add to those of the product, they do not replace them. It is worth having them in front of you before switching the function on.

About the figures on display

Any ranking, classification or performance datum appearing inside or outside the platform describes past trades and reads better as history than as a forecast. This site reproduces no performance figures for any participant and suggests nobody to follow, because doing so would present as expectable something nobody can support.

Trading these products carries significant risk and can end in the loss of the invested capital, as the operator's own app listings warn. Copying does not soften that warning in any sense.

The losses are copied just as the wins are, somebody else's record does not anticipate the future and the behavior of the person you follow can change with no warning: all of that happens with your capital.

Good practices protect the account

A few decisions taken before switching the function on avoid most of the nasty surprises, and all of them depend on you and not on who you choose to follow.

The underlying idea is that copying should be a bounded part of your trading, with limits already written down when you switch it on.

Before switching it on

1. Set the total amount you can lose in full. Not the one you would rather not lose: the one you can lose entirely without affecting your expenses for the month.
2. Fix the size per replicated trade and keep it constant, just as you would with a rule of your own. How that frame is put together is in the guide on strategy for beginners.
3. Check where the copying stops and do it before you need to, not in the middle of an adverse run.
4. Start with a small part of the balance you set aside while you observe how that person trades in practice.

While it is running

• Review how often positions are opened and whether that matches what you expected at the start.
• Write down what happens. A record makes the behavior of the copying visible and gives you something concrete to review.
• Treat a sudden increase in size or frequency as a sign to review, not as an opportunity to go along with.
• Remember that withdrawing funds follows its own rules, among them withdrawing to the same method used to deposit, according to the operator's Payment Policy; it is explained in the note on the withdrawal to a bank account.

If after this you decide on opening an account with your own funds, do it with money you can lose in full and with the rules already written. The service is limited to people over 18 according to the Public Offer, and this product does not work as a replacement for an income or as a way of covering debts.

An amount you can lose entirely, a constant size per replicated trade, an exit route checked in advance and a record of what happens: those four decisions depend on you alone.