Copy Trading Update – eToro – 16/April/2019

It's been profitable...

So basically, my portfolio has been steadily rising and I'm at 1.45% profit for the month so far. How lovely 🙂

Which trader is winning?

It's still Citadelpoint. He's still winning, still taking profits regularly and still my highest earner. I am currently copying him with around 11% of my portfolio - less than Berrau, or Olivier Danvel, or Alnayef. People are asking me why that is...

Why not copy Citadelpoint with more?

It's a matter of risk. I know he's the clear winner right now, but I'm still very cautious about upping his copy amount. If anything, I'm actually still planning to draw my copy of him down lower proportionally. Am I mad? I don't think so. Although he's been doing absolutely magnificently, and I really hope it continues, I still have concerns. His trade sizes can still be way too big for my comfort. Sometimes he just goes 'all in' and puts all of the funds I have copied him with on a single trade. "Good" you might say. "the guy's winning - let him make you some big gains!"

I understand that thinking, I really do. Believe me, I'd like nothing more than to make massive gains, post huge green bars in my stats and get a million copiers. But the risk is also very real. If one of those big trades goes really wrong, it could cost me an awful lot.

"Life's all about taking risks" I hear you say... Also true, but that's not the type of portfolio I'm trying to build. I'm trying to build one where I can put much more money in. A portfolio where $20,000 would be so safe that I don't have to watch all day every day... And with that as a goal, Citadelpoint is still a bit of an unknown quantity as a trader.

I really do hope he carries on winning though. It's been fantastic to watch the profits just growing daily 🙂 Fan-tas-tic.

How's Chocowin trading?

Very well indeed. He's at 11.8% of my portfolio as I still see him as one of the higher risk traders in my portfolio. In spite of this though, he's my second most profitable trader at the moment. He's been making lots of small trades and providing great consistent returns.

He's also agreed to be in my upcoming video where I interview a range of eToro's Popular Investors 🙂 Looking forward to it...

Alnayef and his long-term Forex Trades

Alnayef's still holding all those long term forex positions... The AUD/USD one which was losing so badly is back closer to profit now. It's still been a long hold though, and the fees have been growing. I hope this marks the beginning of a bit of a turnaround for Alnayef really.

When I look at his trades, they all seem to move pretty much in lockstep. He seems to have analysed the macro-economic situation, and opened a range of positions accordingly. Whilst his positions are varied, they all seem to move in a similar direction. This tells me that he has an overall view of the economic situation and knows which forex pairs to trade in light of what he thinks will happen next.

It's very clever to be able to do that. In the last video I posted a link in the description to an Anton Kriel video series. It was an amazing set of videos, going over the fundamentals of macro-economic factors which affect currency trading. I'd highly recommend giving it a watch if you're into trading Forex. Really helpful stuff.

The fees on Alnayef's trades are still really high for his long-term positions. But, the shorter term trades actually have a very reasonable ratio of fees to profits. I'm hoping he can close those long-term trades and get into some shorter time frame trading and turn things around a bit. We'll see.

Olivier Danvel - are all his stats still green?

Yes they are 🙂 He's had a bit of a slow time recently, but it's all still profitable. At the moment, he has a couple of oil 'sell' trades open, but nothing else. I think he's waiting for the right entry points as usual so I'm not worried about his lack of activity. I sort of trust him to make the right decisions at this point. Very nice 🙂

Berrau and trades turning against him

So Berrau currently has an open AUD/USD position which is at quite a high loss. Recently he's been a bit more volatile with wins, then losses, then wins, then losses etc. When trades have gone against him though, he hasn't paniced yet. Instead he's opened positions in the same pair in the opposite direction. If one is winning, the other is losing, but it's a great way to not make further losses whilst you figure out what the market is doing.

It's sort of like pressing a giant 'pause' button in his trading. It's a good idea, and so far it's been working for him.

Several times he's opened a trade, and it's gone against him. At that point, he's consistently applied good strategies to limit his potential loss with counter trades. He's actually ended up in profit each time, and it's very reassuring. They say even the best traders are right only 50% of the time. What makes the difference is how a trader reacts when something's winning and when something's losing. So far Berrau seems to have a cool head and working strategies.

Which other traders am I looking to copy?

I've been looking at Kela-Leo who trades a range of assets including Commodities and Forex. The problem is that he's in the middle of a convoluted Gold trade right now. I'd rather stay out of it to be honest. The problem is that I can either copy him with open trades (at which point I'm in that gold trade). Or, I can only copy open trades.

The problem with that is that he's opened some Gold trades which started losing. To counter this and stop more losses, he opened counter-trades (buys instead of sells). This has that same effect of cancelling out the losing trades. But if I only copy open trades I'll only get the new 'counter trades'.

For him, the buys and sells in gold are part of his overall strategy. They're balancing each other out and ensuring he's not losing money. For me to take only the new buy trades, or only the new sell trades would mean I'm in a risky situation... His strategy is working as a whole. That's how he's trading. If I only take part of his trades, I'm not under the protection of his full strategy around Gold. I could potentially make losses where he's staying profit/loss neutral.

I don't like the thought of that. So I can't copy with or without open trades right now. I'll think more and watch where he goes with it all. I am still planning to copy him, maybe just at a better time, when Gold's chosen a direction a little more.


Yep, I still plan to copy Harshsmith but I need more funds in order to do it. That minimum copy trading amount of $1 means I need at least $460 to catch all of his new trades. I haven't got $460 yet, so I'll have to wait. For now I need my money to be working for me, so I'll let Kela-Leo have a go. We'll see what happens...

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