How to choose a Forex trade copier?

Introduction

The Forex trade copier has long been an indispensable tool not only for every money manager or Forex signal provider but also for ordinary Forex traders. The sphere of Forex trade copier application is rather vast and a lot of articles could be and have been written about it. 

How to choose a Forex trade copier?

First of all, you need to proceed from your tasks as a Forex trade copier user, as well as from your working conditions. If you have only 2-3 sub-accounts and copying time is not critical for your strategy-which is almost a non-realistic condition-you can use a Forex trade copier based on MQL scripts or Expert Advisors. However, you need to realize that all terminals (master and sub) must be installed and running at all times. This approach has several disadvantages:

1. Each additional sub-account will increase the CPU load and this will slow down the copier.
2. MQL languages by themselves lead to the slower transfer of orders.
3. An unplanned reboot of a virtual server can cause unexpected crashes and it is quite difficult to set up the whole system after the reboot.

Coming back to the phrase “…account and copying time is not critical for your strategy”, I would like to explain that a delay of a few milliseconds may result in slippage of a few points and hence losses. If you calculate how much you lose per month on slippages with a slow forex copier, you will realize that the cost of a reliable and fast Forex copier will pay back quickly enough and it’s not a product that you can save on buying.

So the speed of copying is the main factor you should focus on when choosing a Forex copier. Next, analyze the options that are offered by the copier and decide which options you need, which are redundant, and which are missing. Especially, pay attention to all sorts of filters because if you use the copier for a long time, you will probably come to the conclusion that you can copy orders from master or sub-accounts, it is often necessary to filter the orders by such parameters as

– magic number or comment

– trading instrument

– stop-loss or take profit value

– lot size

– order open time

And many others.

Also, a useful option can be the ability to copy orders from a small drawdown, thereby increasing the profitability of the strategy. Suppose you see that strategy with magic number 12345 is the most profitable and you want to copy only it cutting off strategies with any magic number, it is quite possible if the Forex account copier has a filter by magic number. Further, observing the strategy you see that after the order is opened, the price, before moving in the right direction, goes a little in the negative (in the drawdown). In this case, you can adjust copying, if course your Forex copier allows it with a drawdown of say 10 points. This will allow you to earn an extra 10 points on each trade.

A very useful feature of the Forex copier is the ability to change or delete the magic number on the sub-account that was on the master account. This will not only allow the broker to identify that you are using or copying this or that automatic strategy (expert advisor) because programmers often write in the comments the name of the expert advisor or other information that can be used in the account expert adviser. Also, if you manage several accounts for your clients, your client does not need to know which trading robot you use.

The ability to copy pending orders including stop loss and profit when an order is executed is a useful feature of any Trade Copier. This disguises the level at which your pending order is set by the broker and prevents the broker from throwing in a quote or widening the spread so the order executes.

How to test a Forex copier?

I would divide this task into three steps:

1. Testing the delays of the account copier;
2. Testing of additional functionality;
3. Evaluating the usability of the interface and error handling.

Testing delays of the account copier

I recommend testing on two demo accounts opened with the same broker. This will exclude additional factors that might affect the result, such as the use of plug-ins by the broker on a real account.  In order to test delays, you should use two EAs installed on a master account. The first should work during a calm market. This can be gridder or any other Expert Advisor that works during a calm market. Second I would recommend an EA that works in a fast market. This can be latency arbitrage software or high-frequency Forex robots such as million pips ea and its varieties that flood the market. After 2 or 3 days, you need to analyze the opening and closing prices on your master and sub-account. How different they are from each other. Also, I would compare the time the order was opened on the master’s account and the time the copier sent the order to the sub-account (just when the order was sent to the sub-account, not when it was opened (since the time of opening the order is influenced not only by internal delays in the trader but also by the execution of the order by the broker), this time should be recorded and displayed in the logs of forex copier trader.

Testing of additional functionality

Next, test all of the filters that you are going to use in your work and all of the options that are important to you. Evaluating the convenience of the interface of the program for order copying and error management. You should clearly understand that when you copy from one master account to another, errors occur for various reasons. It can be wrong settings of orders sizes on sub-account and master account of forex copier (often different brokers have different settings of the minimal lot, max lot, lot step. And this can cause copying to fail). This could be the wrong copying of symbols (for example on EURUSD locale, but on EURUSDfx sub-account).  For this reason, professional trade copiers have a handy interface where you can easily manage multiple accounts, create different copy schemes, convenient log files, and error alerts, so you can quickly see and identify the problem. 

Conclusions

A Forex trade copier is an essential tool in any Forex trader’s toolkit. A professional and reliable trade copy can help you to increase your trading profits and the use of unprofessional trading tools can lead to losses. For this reason, you should choose the trade copy with responsibility. The HFT Forex Copier ( https://hftforexcopier.com ) has all of the above features and capabilities and has been at the forefront of the market for the past 10 years.