Where can I try out Social Trading?

[Justin Freeman]

Due to increasing popularity there are now a whole host of social trading platforms to consider. The big ones would be a good place to start looking as they tend to comply with tighter regulatory frameworks. The rules and regulations are designed to protect account holders. It therefore makes sense to avoid falling in love with the functionality found on a very small platform to then find you might not really want to hold funds with it. The set up at the bigger platforms is actually quite different. ZuluTrade offer access to thousands of ‘signal providers’ and provides a variety of proprietary risk mitigation tools. On the platform it’s even possible for copiers to interact with signal providers and discuss specific trading decisions or general market situations. The vast number of traders available to copy is partly attributable to the ‘open door’ policy run by the platform; ZuluTrade do not vet signal providers and nor do they actually have to run their own money. The broker Ayondo has a smaller number of signal providers on offer but they appear to be just accepting the trade-off between quality and quantity. Slippage on trades is very low. It’s possible to trade your own account rather than just follow others; but there are limited research materials on offer and automated trading is not permitted. Degiro offer no-frills social trading. The markets and educational materials offered are small in size compared to what others offer. There is no Demo account available and yet it is increasingly popular because of the very competitive pricing schedules. Low costs never go out of fashion. The broker eToro is particularly popular with new traders. The trading platform is straightforward in terms of functionality, and the on-boarding process is also very straightforward. Demo accounts are available.It’s possible to copy trade ETFs but after tailoring itself to beginners/intermediates more advanced traders might find the set up slightly limiting. When researching the different brokers it’s worth keeping in mind what your ultimate aims are. Factor in how and when you’ll be able to devote time to managing your account. All the big players have great mobile platforms and Apps that allow traders to monitor their portfolios on the go. But it would be worth trialing this through a Demo account to really kick the tires.

[Sam Farrah]

HI Sam, I would check out eToro. However, there are many others and you can see loads of reviews available on the website here.