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Manual trading Vs Copy trading

Jun 14, 2021 06:30

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Trading is a form of art. Trading can be done in different ways, two of the main ways that people trade include manual trading  –  the art of performing all the market analysis yourself and then placing the trades and copy trading, – the simple act of finding a trader that you believe has a good strategy, and simply copying their trades onto your own account. The latter is fastly becoming one of the more popular ways to trade with multiple platforms appearing allowing people to copy other traders’ trades. We are going to be looking at the advantages and disadvantages of both so you can compare which method of trading may be best suited for you.

In this article we will explain the differences between automated & manual trading. So let’s dig a little deeper into both! Manual trading Vs Copy trading.

Manual trading system

Manual trading Vs Copy trading - 2

This is the traditional style of trading which involves you to look at the markets and enable you to open or close market positions whenever you choose and then placing your trade in line with your strategy and any risk management plans that you have in place. Trading seems relatively simple: you place a deposit, select a currency pair to trade, determine the direction of the market trend, set the leverage level (specifying the stop loss and profit taking points) and open the trade.

  • When you are trading in a manual manner, you are less susceptible to certain events such as economic news, simply because you are in control of your trades and can decide not to put any trades on during these times.
  • You are able to perform better than a computer in regards to placing trades, simply due to the fact that you have experience, your own intuition, and are able to make decisions based on real-world events that a robot may not be able to.
  • The other main advantage is simply the fact that as a human trader you have the ability to analyse more variables that influence the markets whereas a computer will not be able to.
  • Trading can also take a long time, time that you do not always have and so you may need to make sacrifices to other parts of your life to trade properly. Due to this, you have to sit at the computer for long periods of time, making it a little boring if nothing is happening.
  • As a human, you are prone to emotions, these emotions can have an effect on your trading and can potentially cause you to make mistakes. Your trading will also be limited to your availability, you can only trade when you are there at the terminal, so this will be limited by things like sleep and work.

Copy Trading system

Specifically for copy trading, there is a master account that is controlled by a person. Master account is linked by number of slave accounts. When a trade is placed on the master account, it is automatically copied to the copy accounts.

There are actually a few different versions of copy trading including, signals, mirror trading, and social trading. Each one has a similar concept, you are finding a trader and then simply taking their trades and putting it onto your own account, hence the term copy trading. It takes a lot of responsibility, but you are putting your accounts and trades in the hands of someone else. So let’s take a quick look at the different versions and advantages of these trading methods.

  • One of the main advantage copy trading offers, is that it saves precious time for all traders, both experienced and new, by eliminating the need to constantly track and analyze the markets.
  • The other advantage of this sort of trading include that you can trade with very little knowledge of forex, there is no need for you to monitor your trades all day long, you won’t miss any trades as you are taking the same ones as the trader is, you have the opportunity to learn from the taker by watching what they are doing, you are also able to diversify your portfolio while at the same time keeping your risk low.
  • The fact is that if a master will make a bad trade that will result in a bad outcome for a copy trading account and your account is out of your control in this situation.
  • You also can’t make any decisions based on your own findings or initiatives.
  • Finally, you won’t gain as much knowledge and experience simply copying someone rather than doing the work yourself you have to simply follow it.

Mirror Trading

Mirror Trading has been in use in the foreign exchange market since the early 2000s.  It probably sounds pretty similar due to the names of copy and mirroring. The main difference is that with copy trading you are copying from a single trader, with mirror trading, you are taking trades from a basket of traders, you don’t necessarily have a choice of which traders and which trades to mirror, just that you will get some from that basket of traders.

  • It does not take a lot of time at all, the trades and analysis are done by other people. There is a reduced risk when compared to copy trading due to there being a choice of multiple traders rather than just one.
  • The potential for consistent profits are higher and can be expected due to the trading models generated from mirror trading, there are also no emotions when trading like this as they cannot affect the trades that are being put on.
  • You are not in control of the trades that your account is making, the algorithms used to choose the trades are also often not known which can make it hard to know why certain trades are being made.
  • Mirror trading is not recommended for beginners, as you need some form of understanding when choosing which traders to have in your basket.

Social Trading System

The other style of trading is social trading, this is a mix between the other two, this is where there is a kind of marketplace where you can view other traders or trades and choose which ones to copy, it gives little more control over what you trade and copy.

  • The advantage of this style of copy trading is that you have more control over what you are trading.
  • You are also able to engage with other traders, getting and giving ideas on trades, and working out different reading strategies. There is often more information available on the traders so you can better analyze their trading strategy to work out exactly what you want to trade.
  • It will take a long time to work out who to follow due to the amount of analysis that you will need to perform.
  • You may also miss opportunities for trades if you are not at your computer, some traders and news events can have more hype than expected, giving a false sense of confidence in certain traders and some of the social trading platforms can have transparency issues, keeping their workings and costs hidden from the copiers.

Conclusion

Encompassing the best of both Manual and Copy trading, these Automated Trading Signals may come from either (or a combination of both) forex trading professionals and automated systems, and their trades are automatically replicated to your trading account.

So that is manual trading and copy trading, there are advantages and disadvantages both, you need to work out which one will work for you, or maybe even try a little bit of both. There is no harm in trying multiple methods, as a beginner, copy trading is perfect, but it is always good to learn on the side so that you can later be an independent trader with the ability to trade fully yourself and not have to rely on others.

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