What social trading platform is right for me?

[Benjamin Schmitz]

[Justin Freeman]

Social trading is increasingly popular and with more brokers now offering the service there is a wide range of platforms to choose from. The general benefits of social trading apply across the board, but a lot of the providers have distinctive features to appeal to personal taste. Social trading involves sharing information with other traders, hopefully to the benefit of your own account. A sub-group of social trading is Copy Trading, where, for a fee, the trading decisions of other traders can be copied directly and automatically to your own account. Sourcing valuable information and sharing ideas with other traders is a long-established form of improving trading. Some platforms, such as eToro also offer the chance to exchange views on strategies and the markets in general, with traders that are trading live accounts. A forum such as this allows the curious to learn more and indeed to allocate funds and to Copy Trade traders that they begin to have confidence in. Copy Trading, where Signal Giving traders share information on their portfolios can be found at larger platforms which also have the benefit of tending to be stronger in terms of regulatory and operational frameworks. It’s possible to set up a Demo account with these and keep track of performance and ‘paper trade’ by using virtual funds to follow traders and get one step closer to seeing what social trading is like. The different brokers allow varying degrees of ‘customization’. Ayondo Markets allow copy traders to apply different rates of leverage when copying. They also allow copiers to follow some but not all trades; for example, should you not want to trade cryptocurrencies a block can be put on trades in those instruments. The quality and quantity of Signal Providers available to be followed also varies from platform to platform, ZuluTrade for example have thousands of Signal Providers to choose from. If you’re interested in combining social trading with your own trading some of the platforms allow both activities to be carried out in the same place. Most Demo accounts are easy to set up and do not require any kind of deposit of funds and trying out the service offered can allow you to establish which suits you best. The platform functionality and quality of mobile experience might be important to you. As social trading is relatively ‘hands-off’ in nature it’s relatively easy to establish which broker best fits in with your other day-to-day commitments.