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Social & Copy Trading

Subscriptions, performance fees and trade sync

What actually goes wrong

Seven ways copy trading loses its followers

They do not leave because the leader lost. They leave because they got a different loss.

The promise of copy trading is simple enough that clients understand it immediately: this person trades, and so do you. Which means the moment a follower’s result does not resemble the leader’s, the product has broken its only promise — and the explanation, however correct, sounds like an excuse.

Most of that gap is mechanical: latency, rounding, a follower with a tenth of the balance, a subscription that started mid-position. The failures below are the places it opens up, and each one is closed by making the rule explicit and visible before the follower needs it explained.

  1. 01

    The follower got a worse price than the leader.

    Copies are placed against the leader’s fill in the same execution path rather than routed through a queue that reads positions after the fact. Slippage is measured and shown per trade, so the difference is a number on the record instead of a suspicion the client cannot check.

  2. 02

    A follower with a small balance got the leader’s lot size.

    Volume scales by equity ratio, a fixed multiplier or a fixed lot, set per subscription. A follower with a fiftieth of the leader’s capital takes a fiftieth of the position, and where that rounds below the minimum the trade is skipped with a reason rather than silently oversized.

  3. 03

    Subscribing mid-position meant joining halfway down.

    A new subscription either copies the leader’s open positions at current prices or waits for the next new trade — the follower chooses, and is told which they have chosen. Nobody inherits a losing position they were never shown the entry price of.

  4. 04

    Stopping a copy was slower than starting one.

    A follower can pause new copies, close everything now, or stop and keep what is open, from their own portal, immediately. A product that makes leaving hard does not retain clients; it collects complaints and then loses them anyway.

  5. 05

    There were no limits until there was a loss.

    Per-follower risk settings cap the drawdown they will accept, the instruments they will copy, the maximum lot and the total exposure. When a limit is hit, copying stops for that follower and only that follower, and they are told why.

  6. 06

    The leaderboard rewarded the reckless.

    Ranking uses return alongside drawdown, consistency, account age and volume, not last month’s percentage. A leader who tripled an account in three weeks on one instrument should not sit above one who has compounded steadily for two years, and here they do not.

  7. 07

    The performance fee arrived as a surprise.

    Fees are charged on profit above the follower’s own high-water mark, on terms shown before they subscribe and itemised afterwards. A follower who understands the fee before it is taken does not open a ticket about it.

What is in it

Leaders, followers, the copy, and the settlement

Four pieces, and the one in the middle is the only one clients will ever judge you on.

  1. Part one

    Leaders

    Who is allowed to be copied, on what terms, and what a prospective follower gets to see about them. Approval is yours rather than automatic, because a leaderboard is a recommendation whether or not you meant it as one.

    • Application and approval workflow
    • Published performance and drawdown history
    • Ranking on risk-adjusted measures
    • Fee terms set per leader
    • Capacity caps on followers or volume
    • Instrument and leverage restrictions
    • Profile visible in the client portal
  2. Part two

    Followers

    The subscription is where the follower sets their own terms, and every one of them is enforced per follower rather than across the book. Starting, pausing and stopping are all self-service and all immediate.

    • Subscribe, pause, stop and close-all
    • Scaling by equity ratio, multiplier or fixed lot
    • Maximum drawdown before auto-stop
    • Instrument allow and deny lists
    • Maximum lot and total exposure caps
    • Copy open positions or wait for the next
    • Follow more than one leader at once
  3. Part three

    The copy itself

    Entries, exits, modifications and partial closes, mirrored in the order they happened. What could not be copied is recorded as such, because a skipped trade a follower discovers for themselves is worse than a skipped trade they were told about.

    • Entries, exits and partial closes
    • Stop and limit modifications
    • Slippage measured per copied trade
    • Skipped trades logged with a reason
    • Minimum lot rounding rules
    • Per-follower execution record
    • Works across MT5, cTrader and the rest
  4. Part four

    Fees and settlement

    Performance fees on gains above each follower’s own mark, split between leader and broker on your terms, settled through the same ledger everything else runs through.

    • Performance fee with per-follower high-water mark
    • Subscription and volume-based fees
    • Split between leader and broker
    • Settlement periods you define
    • Itemised statement per follower
    • Leader earnings in their own view
    • Full trail on every calculation

Who signs in

One product, six sets of expectations

Two of them are clients, and they are the two who will tell everybody how it went.

  • Leaders. Their published record, their followers, their capacity and their earnings. They trade their own account and the copying happens around them.
  • Followers. Who they follow, on what scaling, under what limits, what it has cost and what it has returned — with stopping as easy as starting.
  • The risk desk. Aggregate exposure created by copying, per leader and across the book, plus the caps that stop one popular leader becoming the firm’s whole position.
  • Support. Why a trade was skipped, what a fee was for and where a subscription stands — answerable from the record rather than escalated to somebody technical.
  • Finance. Fee splits, settlement runs and the movements they produce, through the same approval machinery as everything else.
  • Compliance. Leader approval, the terms each follower accepted, and the record of what was disclosed before they subscribed.

Copy trading makes one promise. Followers leave the moment their result stops resembling the leader’s.

Questions about the module

Before you open it to clients

What a desk wants settled before followers start putting money behind somebody else’s trading.

  • Close, and where it differs the difference is recorded rather than left to be noticed. Copies are placed against the leader’s fill in the same execution path, and slippage is measured per copied trade and shown on the follower’s record. The gaps that remain are mechanical and unavoidable: a follower whose scaled size rounds below the platform minimum, an instrument they excluded, a limit of theirs that had already been reached. Every one of those is logged as a skipped trade with its reason, which is the difference between a client who understands the variance and one who suspects it.

  • Three ways, chosen per subscription. By equity ratio, so a follower with a fiftieth of the leader’s capital takes a fiftieth of the position and the proportional result matches; by a fixed multiplier, where the follower sets their own aggression relative to the leader; or by a fixed lot, where every copied trade is the same size regardless. Equity ratio is the default because it is the one that keeps percentage returns comparable, which is what the follower is actually buying.

  • Yes, and the limits are enforced for that follower alone rather than across the book. They can set a maximum drawdown at which copying stops automatically, a maximum lot per trade, a ceiling on total open exposure, and allow or deny lists by instrument — so a follower who does not want crypto copied simply does not get it. When a limit stops a trade or a subscription, the follower is told which limit and when, in their own portal. You can also set house limits above theirs that no follower may exceed.

  • The follower decides, from their own portal, immediately. They can pause — no new copies, existing positions still managed by the leader; stop and keep, which leaves the open positions in their hands to manage themselves; or close everything now at market. There is no approval step and no waiting period, because a product that makes leaving harder than joining generates complaints first and departures second. Whichever they choose is recorded with the time, which settles any later question about what they asked for.

  • On risk-adjusted measures rather than last month’s return, and you control the weighting. Return matters, but so do maximum drawdown, consistency across periods, account age and traded volume — because a leader who tripled a small account in three weeks on one instrument is not a better proposition than one who has compounded steadily for two years, and a board that says otherwise will eventually cost you the followers who believed it. Capacity caps per leader stop a popular strategy being oversold past the size it works at.

  • On profit above each follower’s own high-water mark, over settlement periods you define, split between the leader and the firm on the terms in their agreement. The follower sees the terms before they subscribe and an itemised calculation afterwards; the leader sees their earnings in their own view; and both come out of the same run, so there is nothing to reconcile between them. Fees settle through the same ledger as everything else, which means they appear in reconciliation and reporting like any other movement rather than as a side calculation somebody maintains.