Category: Social Trading

ZuluTrade Slippage

Posted on by Admin in Guides, Platforms, Reviews, Social Trading, Tips

ZuluTrade, is a great social trading platform however many people complain that they often experience heavy slippage when copy some of the signal providers on ZuluTrade. This slippage can sometimes seriously eat into a traders profits. So I undertook an investigation to establish which brokerages experienced the worst rates of slippage. To do this I looked through a selection of ZuluTrades most sucessful signal providers and averaged out the slippage each brokerage had over the past year. 

The Top Ten Brokerages 

Rank Broker Slippage (Pips)
1 AAAFx 0.27
2 GO Forex 0.43
3 Weltrade 0.61
4 Gain Australia 0.67
5 Gain UK 0.7
6 COLMEX 0.73
7 FX Primus 0.83
8 FXDD MT 0.88
9 FXCM UK 0.94
10 Xemarkets 0.95
Unsurprisingly, AAAFx had the leas slippage out of the all brokerages offered on the ZuluTrade platform. As AAAFx is totally integrated with the platform this is what you would expect. However, much of the rest of the list is quite shocking for instance I do not think that many people would expect that some small players in the world of Forex would suffer as little as they do. Slippage of under a single Pip would still allow most people to make money from copying ZuluTrade’s better signal providers. Both Gain Australia and Gain UK did pretty well (for those not in the know Gain operates Forex.com). Lagging back in 10th place with Slippage of less than 1 Pip is xemarkets of Cysec. So it does appear that there are a number decent regulated alternatives to trading with AAAFx, however none of the alternatives come close to AAAFx in terms of slippage. However a number of these brokerages listed offer spreads that are considerably tighter than the Spreads offered on AAAFx. This means that AAAFx may not be the best choice for those wishing to use the ZuluTrade platform.   

Now for the naming and shaming of the brokerages that suffer the most slippage on the ZuluTrade platform. 
Rank Broker Slippage Pips
34 FXTG 2.24
35 IKON NZ 2.36
36 ACM GOLD 2.72
37 YouTradeFX 3.29
38 KVB KUNLUN 4.28
Some of the slippage experienced with these brokerages is completely outrageous. KVB KUNLUN customers suffered average of 4.28 Pips of Slippage which would seriously eat into a traders profits. Again things aren’t much better for customers of YouTradeFX who suffer an average of 3.29 Pips of Slippage. Whats worse is that some of these brokerages featured on our shame list aren’t particularly competitive when it comes to the Spreads on offer. If you are currently trading with one these brokerages I suggest that you move to a different provider.  
 
My study of Slippage on ZuluTrade only featured 38 brokerages, this due to the fact that for some of the less commonly used brokerages didn’t have large enough data sets for me to be able to compare them to the properly to the 38 brokerages which did feature in the study. What the study does show is that those using ZuluTrade should ensure they pick a competitive brokerage in terms of both slippage and spreads.

Tradeo Review: Social Trading

Posted on by Admin in Platforms, Reviews, Social Trading

Important Facts 

  • Broker Independent supports a range of regulated and unregulated brokerages. 
  • Tradeo is not regulated by a financial regulatory body itself. 
  • Commissions for signal providers not stated. 
  • Number of traders on network: Around 5,000 different traders on the network at the time of writing. 
Social Trading

Tradeo is an independent broker meaning that it doesn’t take on it’s on clients trades or give preferential treatment to a particular brokerage. Rather Tradeo earns its revenues by entering into revenue sharing agreements with the brokerages it operates with. Tradeo has a reasonably large user base of traders though it should be made that not all of the registered members are trading on real accounts with a number of the users trading on demo accounts. I would have to say that Tradeo is rather a small social network in comparison to some of the more well known Social networks such as eToro and ZuluTrade. 

Supported Brokerages 
Tradeo supports a range of brokerages both unregulated and regulated. Some of the better known brokerages supported by the Tradeo platform include FxPro, Alpari, AVA FX, Markets.com, easyforex and FXCM. The range of brokerages supported by Tradeo is pretty impressive and you will certainly find a brokerage which will suit your needs. However, the support for the various brokerages varies quite significantly. For instance Tradeo is very proud of the bridge it has recently put in place with FXCM. But as far as I am aware none of the supported brokerages have the Tradeo platform fully integrated with the social platform. As is the case with AAAFx and ZuluTrade. It should be noted that ForexGlobes plans to provide such an integrated solution with all of its brokerages when it exits it’s beta period. This is somewhat a negative in regards to Tradeo, it should also be noted that all the major brokerages supported by Tradeo are also supported by their rival ZuluTrade. So it seems unclear to me why one would pick Tradeo over ZuluTrade. 

Signal Providers/Traders 

There are a wide selection of traders to follow, while the selection isn’t as wide as the likes of ZuluTrade and eToro there is still a huge selection of different traders to pick from. With many traders having a great track history posting returns of 5000%+. The narrower selection traders is something of a downside to Tradeo, and it should be noted that there are a number of traders/signal providers who are operating their Tradeo accounts with the use of a demo account. This being said a diligent individual should be able to find a number of traders who they will have great success following. The search functionality is not quite as good as one would hope it to be, put this doesn’t prevent you from finding good traders to follow.
 
Overall, Tradeo offers a reasonable Social trading experience though I do feel that it will struggle against its bigger rivals such as eToro and ZuluTrade.

eToro Openbook an Overview

Posted on by Admin in Reviews, Social Trading
eToro is one of the better known social trading platforms out there and today we are going to be taking a look at the product at the core of their social trading platform which is their Openbook offering. 
The Openbook is the home of social trading at eToro and is where all of the companies social trading features can be accessed. On opening up the Openbook platform the trader is greeted with a screen which displays the traders eToro rates the best. You can further search through these traders and categorize them by risk and other variants, allowing you to eliminate some of the higher risk traders in order to find someone to follow who is suitable for your needs. 
Each trader who allows followers has a profile page which is quite similar in way to Facebook. At the top of the page is the traders recent performance and various over stats that prospective followers maybe interested in. You can also see what connections the particular trader has with other people on the eToro network. Below this the individual’s live feed which acts a bit like a Facebook profile wall and allows people to post comments to their wall and updates whenever the trader opens a new position. 
In addition to there being profiles for each trader who uses eToro’s social trading platform to either trade or gather followers, there is also the general live activity feed which features all the current social trading activity on the eToro platform and updates in real time. This updates with information about various traders opening and closing positions, as well as showing who has followed who into a trade. 
 
Much like how each trader has it’s own profile each instrument has a page where various traders in the eToro social trading network can leave comments and opinions on which way the instrument is going to move. As well as looking at charts of the instruments recent performances, this has never been particularly helpful for me personally as I haven’t found many particularly insightful comments left. 
The eToro Openbook social trading platform is very easy to use and should be simple enough to use for anyone who has had previous experiences with social networks. It is partly this reason why it has become some popular for those who wish to easily follow and copy successful traders. As with any type of trading there are significant risks and I have talked about the dangers of the eToro Copytading before. 
 
Using the eToro Openbook platform is a breeze, the difficult part is choosing who to follow, as not a huge amount of information is provided regarded the previous performance of a particular trader. Though it is possible to do some deeper research and go back through the traders past trades and determine what kind of strategy they use. Though there does seem to be a number of highly successful traders operating on the eToro platform which means there are probably some decent opportunities making money from simply following the activities of others.