Plain-English definitions of the terms you will meet in copy trading, prop-firm rules, MT4/MT5/cTrader integration, FIX-level execution, and high-frequency replication. 65 entries, A-to-Z.
How to read this glossary. Each term has a 40-80 word definition focused on what it means in a copy-trading and trade-copier context — not generic finance theory. For deeper material, follow the related-pages links at the bottom or read the Guia do Copiador de Trades Forex.
A
Account Mirroring
Replicating positions from one account to another in real time. Inside a single prop firm, mirroring usually refers to copying between a personal demo and a funded live account; cross-broker mirroring requires a trade copier such as Copiadora HFT Forex.
B
Balance
Money in the trading account excluding floating profit and loss from open positions. Balance changes only when a position is closed, a deposit is made, a withdrawal is processed, or swap and commission are charged. Compare with Equity.
C
Cloud Copier
A trade copier that runs on a third-party server. The provider sees every trade and adds 50–500 ms of network latency. Convenient but unsuitable for HFT, scalping, or strategies whose intellectual property must stay private. See also Local Copier.
Commission
A per-lot fee charged by the broker on each transaction, separate from the spread. Common on ECN and raw-spread accounts. A trade copier replicates orders 1:1 but commissions are applied independently on each receiver account.
Comment Filter
A trade copier rule that includes or excludes orders based on the comment string an EA or signal provider attaches. Lets one master account run multiple strategies and send only specific ones to each receiver. Pairs naturally with Magic Number filters.
Consistency Rule
A prop-firm rule that limits how much of total profit can come from a single trading day. Designed to discourage one-shot lottery trades. Affects copier setups because outsized trades on the master propagate to all receivers and can violate consistency on every account at once.
Co-located Server
A server physically placed in the same data centre as the broker bridge or matching engine. Removes most network latency and is a prerequisite for serious HFT and arbitrage strategies running on FIX API.
Copy Trading
A model in which the trades of one account (the signal provider) are automatically replicated on follower accounts. Copy trading covers everything from social platforms to private MT4 EAs to FIX-level mirroring across institutional accounts.
cTrader
A retail trading platform developed by Spotware. Offers a depth-of-market view, level-II pricing, and an Open API that allows external software to read positions and place orders without a hosted copy service. See cTrader Copy vs Local Copier.
cTrader Copy
Spotware’s hosted copy-trading service inside cTrader. A signal provider lists publicly, followers subscribe, and Spotware takes around 25 % of profits. Trades are executed on Spotware infrastructure with 100–500 ms latency. Local copier alternatives exist via the Open API.
D
Daily Drawdown Rule
A prop-firm rule that resets every trading day at a fixed time. If account equity drops more than the allowed percentage between resets, the account is breached. Receivers in a copy setup inherit this risk fully and need their own per-day risk caps. See prop-firm copy guide.
DXtrade
A multi-asset trading platform by Devexperts. Used by some prop firms (FTMO DXtrade accounts, others) and brokers. Supports REST and WebSocket APIs that local trade copiers tap into for real-time replication.
Drawdown
The peak-to-trough decline in account equity, expressed in percent or currency. Maximum drawdown is the worst such decline over a period. Prop firms gate funded status on strict drawdown limits; copier money management must respect them.
E
EA Restriction
A prop-firm rule that bans, throttles, or audits expert advisors. Some firms permit EAs but forbid copy trading; others do the reverse. Reading the rulebook before connecting a copier is essential — using a banned tool is grounds for account closure and forfeiture of profit.
Equity
Balance plus floating profit and loss from open positions. Equity is the number prop firms watch for drawdown rules and the number a trade copier uses when calculating risk-based lot sizes.
Expert Advisor (EA)
An automated trading program that runs inside MetaTrader. EAs can place orders, manage positions, and signal a trade copier. The copier reads the EA’s orders from the master and replicates them to receiver accounts.
F
API FIX
Financial Information eXchange protocol. The institutional-grade order interface offered by ECN brokers and prime brokers. FIX gives sub-millisecond execution but requires custom integration; supported natively by HFT-grade trade copiers.
Margem livre
Equity minus margin used by open positions. Free margin determines how many additional positions can be opened. A copier must size positions on the receiver to keep free margin positive even during drawdowns, otherwise orders reject.
Funded Account
A prop-firm account that has passed the evaluation phase and trades the firm’s capital. Profit is split, typically 70–90 % to the trader. Copying signals into a funded account is the most common reason traders adopt copiers.
H
Hardware-ID License
A license bound to a specific machine via CPU, motherboard, and disk identifiers. Prevents redistribution and is the standard licensing model for high-end local trade copiers, including HFT Forex Copier.
Hedging Mode
An MT5 account mode that allows multiple positions on the same symbol, including opposing buy and sell positions. The MT4 default. A trade copier must understand the source mode to replicate correctly into a netting receiver.
HFT (High-Frequency Trading)
Trading style characterised by very short holding periods and tight latency budgets. In a copier context, HFT means the entire pipeline — master fill, copier processing, receiver order — must complete in under a few milliseconds. See why latency matters.
Hosted Copier
Synonym for cloud copier. Software that the user does not run locally; the vendor or a marketplace operates the infrastructure. Trades and account credentials pass through third-party hands.
I
Investor Password
A read-only credential for an MT4 or MT5 account. Allows software to monitor positions but not to place or close orders. A trade copier supporting investor-password mode can read a master without ever holding write credentials — a privacy and security advantage.
L
Latência
The time between an event and a system’s response to it. End-to-end copier latency includes broker fill on the master, terminal API delivery, copier processing, network hop to the receiver broker, and receiver fill — typically under 1 ms locally, 100–500 ms in the cloud.
Alavancagem
Borrowed capital ratio offered by the broker (e.g. 1:100). A copier replicates orders, not leverage settings. If receiver leverage is lower than master leverage, the copier may need to scale lot size down to fit the receiver’s free margin.
Local Copier
A trade copier installed on the trader’s own machine or VPS. Trades never leave the user’s infrastructure. Latency drops to inter-process communication levels — typically under one millisecond — and intellectual property stays private.
Lot Multiplier
A copier setting that multiplies the master’s lot size before sending the order to a receiver. A multiplier of 0.5 halves position size, a multiplier of 2.0 doubles it. Used to scale strategies across accounts of different sizes.
Tamanho do lote
The standard contract unit on a forex pair. One standard lot equals 100 000 units of base currency. Mini lots are 0.1, micro lots 0.01. A copier translates the master’s lot into the receiver’s broker-allowed minimum increment.
M
Magic Number
A numeric tag attached to orders by an EA or trader. Trade copiers use magic numbers to filter which strategies copy to which receivers — the cleanest way to run multiple uncorrelated strategies through one copier instance.
Margin
The collateral the broker reserves to keep a position open. Margin equals notional position size divided by leverage. A copier must verify that the receiver has enough free margin before sending an order, or the order rejects.
Market Execution
An order execution model in which the broker fills the order at the next available price, with no requote. Standard on ECN and most prop-firm accounts. A copier expects market execution semantics on most receiver platforms.
Master Account
The source account in a copy setup. The copier reads positions and orders from the master and replicates them to one or many receivers. The master may be a manual trader, an EA, or an external signal feed.
MatchTrader
A trading platform by Match-Trade Technologies, used by a growing number of brokers and prop firms. Modern web-based interface with a REST/WebSocket API that local copiers integrate with for cross-platform replication.
MetaTrader 4 (MT4)
The dominant retail forex platform of the last 20 years, by MetaQuotes. Hedging mode by default, mature EA ecosystem, MQL4 scripting language. Most signal providers and copiers still revolve around MT4. See MT4 trade copier.
MetaTrader 5 (MT5)
MetaQuotes’ successor to MT4. Adds depth of market, more order types, multiple asset classes, and netting mode (with optional hedging). MT5 has gradually overtaken MT4 at major prop firms.
Mirror Trading
Synonym for copy trading, often used in institutional and prop contexts. Describes one-to-one position replication between accounts. Mirroring may be cross-broker (via copier) or intra-broker (via the broker’s native mirror service).
N
Netting Mode
An MT5 account mode in which only one net position per symbol can exist. Buying after a sell reduces or flips the position rather than opening a new one. Copiers must translate hedging master orders into netting equivalents to avoid order rejection.
News Trading Restriction
A prop-firm rule that bans or limits trades around scheduled high-impact news. Copiers must include a news-time filter or the master strategy will breach the receiver account during NFP, CPI, or central-bank events.
NinjaTrader
A popular futures and forex trading platform with its own .NET-based scripting environment (NinjaScript). Less common in retail forex but supported by HFT-grade copiers for cross-platform replication.
O
One-Time License
A perpetual license model: a single payment, no recurring subscription. Common in serious local-copier software because it aligns with the buyer’s preference for predictable, capital-expense tooling rather than ongoing fees.
Open API (cTrader)
Spotware’s protocol for external software to authenticate, read positions, and place orders on cTrader accounts. The Open API is the channel through which a local copier replaces hosted cTrader Copy without paying the 25 % performance fee.
P
Partial Close
Closing only a fraction of an existing position. A copier must replicate partial closes proportionally — if the master closes 30 % of a 1-lot position, each receiver should also close 30 % of its scaled position.
Pending Order
An order that triggers only when price reaches a specified level — buy limit, sell limit, buy stop, sell stop. Copiers replicate pending orders alongside market orders, with optional offset adjustments per receiver.
Pip
The smallest standard price increment on a forex pair. On most pairs, one pip equals 0.0001 of price. A 30-pip stop loss on EUR/USD with a 1-lot position represents roughly 300 USD of risk.
Position Sizing
Choosing the lot size for a trade based on account equity and per-trade risk. A copier with risk-based money management computes receiver lot size from receiver equity and a target risk percent, not from the master’s lot.
Profit Target
The percentage gain a prop-firm trader must reach to pass an evaluation phase — commonly 8–10 % for the first stage. Reachable with copied signals provided risk and consistency rules are respected.
Prop Firm
A proprietary trading firm that funds traders with the firm’s capital after they pass an evaluation. Modern retail prop firms (FTMO, FundedNext, The Funded Trader, etc.) operate fully online. Copy trading into prop accounts is a major copier use case.
R
Reverse Copy / Reversal Mode
A copier setting that flips every order — master buys, receiver sells, and vice-versa. Used to systematically fade a chronically losing strategy or to hedge across two accounts. Same SL/TP logic, opposite direction.
Risk Multiplier
A copier mode in which receiver lot size is computed from receiver equity and a target risk percent per trade — independent of the master’s lot. Lets a 1 000 USD account and a 100 000 USD account both copy the same signal at proportional risk.
Round-Trip Time
The time for a request to travel to a server and the response to come back. In copier context, the relevant round-trips are master broker → master terminal, terminal → copier, copier → receiver broker. Each adds to total slippage.
S
Signal Provider
The trader or system whose orders are copied. May operate a master account inside a marketplace, run a private MT4 EA, or stream signals through FIX. Signal-provider performance is the primary input to copy-trading outcomes.
Slave Account / Receiver Account
The destination account in a copy setup. Receives orders replicated from the master. A single copier instance can drive many receivers in parallel, each with its own lot multiplier, risk percent, and filter rules.
Slippage
The price difference between when an order is sent and when it is filled. Caused by latency, market movement during the round trip, and broker execution policy. Cloud copiers typically add 20–100× more slippage than local copiers.
Spread
The difference between bid and ask price quoted by the broker. Receiver spreads are independent of the master’s. A copier replicates orders but cannot equalise spreads — receivers on wider-spread brokers will earn less per pip.
Stop Loss (SL)
A pending order attached to an open position that closes the position at a specified loss level. Copiers replicate SL with the same price as the master. Optional ‘hide SL’ modes keep the SL on the copier side, invisible to the broker.
Sub-millisecond
Latency under one millisecond. Achievable in a local copier where master and receiver terminals run on the same Windows machine, communicating through shared memory or a local socket rather than the public internet.
Subscription License
A monthly or annual recurring payment for software use. Common in cloud copy services. Local copiers typically prefer a one-time hardware-ID license to avoid recurring cost and dependency on vendor uptime.
Swap
The interest charged or credited on positions held overnight, computed from the interest-rate differential of the traded pair. Receivers see their own broker’s swap rates, independent of the master’s. Long-term copy strategies must account for swap drag.
Symbol Mapping / Suffix Mapping
A copier rule that translates symbol names between brokers — for example mapping master ‘EURUSD’ to receiver ‘EURUSD.m’ or ‘EURUSDpro’. Without mapping, the receiver broker rejects the order on the unknown symbol.
T
Take Profit (TP)
A pending order attached to an open position that closes the position at a specified profit level. Copiers replicate TP with the same price as the master. As with SL, advanced copiers offer a ‘hide TP’ mode that keeps the level on the copier rather than the broker.
Terminal API
The integration surface MetaTrader exposes to external software — DLL imports for MT4, the MetaTrader 5 API for MT5. A local trade copier reads order events through this API and pushes orders back through it.
Tick
A single price update from the broker. Copiers process events at tick frequency on the master account; the receiver tick stream is irrelevant to the copy logic but matters for receiver-side execution price.
Trailing Stop
A stop loss that follows price in the direction of profit. Copiers replicate the trailing logic by mirroring the master’s SL changes — when the master moves SL, the copier moves the receiver SL the same amount.
V
VPS (Virtual Private Server)
A rented Windows or Linux server in a data centre, typically near the broker. Running a local copier on a VPS keeps it online 24/7 with low latency to the broker, without depending on the trader’s home internet connection.
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