1. Trading with leverage
Forex, CFDs, metals, indices, cryptocurrencies and other leveraged products carry a high level of risk and aren’t suitable for everyone. With leverage, a small price move makes a large gain or loss compared with your deposit. You can lose all the money in your account and, depending on your broker and where you live, possibly more.
Prices can jump past your stop loss on news, over weekends and on holidays. Spreads widen when markets are thin, swaps and commissions add up, and a stop out can close your positions at a loss. Only trade money you can afford to lose.
2. No advice
Algo Trader Tools is software, not a broker, an investment adviser or a portfolio manager. We don’t tell you what to trade, which provider to follow or how to set your risk, and nothing we publish is a recommendation. Make your own decisions and, if you’re unsure, get independent advice from a licensed adviser.
3. Copy trading
A follower copies the master’s trades, not its results. Copies can turn out differently because:
- prices, spreads, swaps and commissions differ between brokers
- prices move while an order travels, so a fill can be better or worse than the master’s
- a broker can fill an order in part, late or not at all, or reject it
- lot sizes are rounded to what each account allows, and the same instrument can have a different contract size at another broker
- a symbol mapping can point at the wrong instrument
- trading hours differ between brokers, so a market can be closed on one account while it’s open on another.
Your sizing settings matter most. A multiplier, a percentage risk per trade or reverse copying can make a follower’s risk far larger than the master’s. And when a broker, MetaTrader, the internet or our service is unavailable, a trade or a close can be copied late or not at all, leaving a position open on a follower after the master has closed it, or the other way round. Check your followers regularly, and try new settings on a demo account first.
4. Equity Guard
Equity Guard closes every position and pending order on an account at the market price when a line you set is reached. It can’t guarantee that the account stays inside that line:
- in a fast market or a price gap, positions can close well past it
- while the market is closed, or when the broker rejects an order, positions stay open until they can be closed; Equity Guard keeps trying
- it acts on the figures it receives from the account: while it can’t get them, it can’t act, and we email you when that happens
- on an account connected with its investor password, it can only alert you
- it stops protecting an account when you disconnect it or your plan ends.
Your prop firm may also measure its limits differently, for example from another balance or at another time of day. Set your lines a little inside your firm’s limits.
5. Prop firm accounts
Prop firms set their own rules on copy trading, trade copiers, Expert Advisors and trading the same strategy on several accounts, and they change them. Breaking them can cost you an account, a challenge fee or a payout. We don’t track any firm’s rules, so check yours before you connect an account, and again whenever they change.
6. Signal pages and track records
Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. A provider’s record is worked out from the history of their account, and it can mislead:
- a short record, or one lucky run, says little about what comes next
- grid and martingale strategies can grow steadily for months and then lose most of an account at once
- for the time before an account was connected to Algo Trader Tools, the record is built from closed trades only, which can hide large losses on positions that were open at the time
- demo accounts trade without real money, so their results can differ from live trading; signal pages say when an account is a demo
- a provider may connect an account with its read-only investor password, which doesn’t show that they’re the one trading it.
Our directory sorts strategies by figures such as growth, which can put the riskiest accounts at the top. Its order isn’t a recommendation, and we don’t check providers or their claims. Providers are independent of Algo Trader Tools.
7. Technology
The service depends on our software and servers, MetaTrader, your broker’s servers and the internet, and any of them can fail or slow down. Our software can contain errors despite our testing. Figures in the app can be delayed or incomplete; your broker’s records are the ones that count.
8. Your responsibility
You decide which accounts to connect, what to copy and at what size, and which limits to set, and the results of your trading are your own. Make sure that trading these products and copy trading are legal where you live, and that you know what tax you owe on your results. If you don’t understand these risks, don’t trade, or get independent advice first.