Hey, so this one's about the "Copy open trades" button...
When you go to copy someone, there's always this little box - 'Copy Open Trades' and this
is just about what that does...
So let's go here, to the...
I'm on the "Copy People" page and here's Wesley ... So let's go to Wesley.
So...
We're used to this - we normally see this profile - we have like the feed, the stats,
the portfolio, chart - all the normal buttons you'll see on someone's profile.
Here, top right, we have the Copy button.
So we press the copy button, and we come to this screen.
Now we're all familiar with this screen, I think... there's the amount I can copy him
with, there's the stop copy - so the - 'stop copy' is different from a stop loss.
A stop loss controls the individual trades that you make when you're manually trading,
you can set a stop loss.
The people you're copying often set stop losses...
This is different, this is a stop copy, which means that basically if the copy amount ever
falls below an amount you've specified like he loses 10% or he loses 50% or ... Then stop
the copy automatically.
It's a safeguard.
So there's that ... there's the stop copy.
Down here is the button we're interested in - "Copy Open Trades" button.
Now, by default, when you come to this copy screen, it'll be ticked, so it's sort of ... the
normal thing is to copy open trades.
We'll start though with what happens if you don't copy open trades.
So let's say you don't copy open trades - what does that mean for you?
Alright, so...
First you've got to understand what an "open trade" means, O.K...
So an open trade is basically any trade which is still active, O.K.
A closed trade means you're in a trade, you've either made as much profit as you want, so
you close the trade - you stop it.
Or you're losing too much money, and you don't want to lose more so you want to stop that
trade - you close the trade.
So open trade - still active.
Closed trade - it's happened in the past, it's finished with and we've moved on to another one.
When I first started doing this, you know, I had always heard people say ... If I heard
someone say "Yeah I'm going to sell Apple" What I thought that meant is that they owned
a bunch of Apple stocks, and they wanted to get rid of them either because they were losing
too much money, or because they'd made lots of money, so they were going to sell Apple.
It's not what it means, at least not when you start trading, when you hear people talking.
To "Sell Apple" means you take out a position - you do a trade where you're betting the
value of Apple is going to drop, and that's how you want to make money - it's called a
"Sell Position" or "Short selling" a stock.
And the other one is called a "buy position" - where you think that it's going to go up
in value, and that's how you're going to make money.
So, anyhow, we don't say "Oh I sell Apple" doesn't mean I sold my stocks, it means .. (Stocks
I already had ..) it means something else.
So you "open" a position - means you do a new trade.
When there's an open position it means that trade's still happening, when you "close"
a position, that's when you finish it - you either take your money, or you stop the losses
and move on to the next one.
So, in his portfolio - we go to his portfolio - Wesley...
And we can basically see a list of all of his open trades.
That's what you see when you look at someone's portfolio.
Here.
So all the ones in red - these are all active at the moment.
He opened them in the past, and he still hasn't closed them.
He's either waiting because they've gone down in value - all the red ones have gone down
in value.
He's losing money on the red ones...
All the green ones here, are going up in value - he's made money on the green ones.
With the red ones he's either waiting - he's waiting basically to see if it'll turn around
and it'll go back up again, you know... most stocks, they don't go just completely down,
or completely up, they sort of go like this - so he's probably watching that and thinking
"Alright that's going to go up."
So, anyhow, these are his open trades - trades which are still active.
So let's say we haven't clicked the copy open trades button...
In the copy screen.
That means that all of these trades that he's in - we're not going to come into these trades
with him.
It means that these are the things he's currently doing, so we're going to disregard these and
the next trade which we're going to copy is the next trade that he opens after we started
the copy.
So we click copy now, and let's say he opens a new trade in an hour - we'll copy that one.
We just won't copy any of these...
O.K?
Now, one of the things that is a bit of a problem with this, and people maybe get confused
by - when you're trading, you try and generally have most of your money used in trades, because
it's your money which really makes you more money.
It's weird that because we buy things, we buy Apple, we sell Tesla, we have all these
things and ... But really my actual money is my real asset, you know.
I mean there's times now where I'm sort of stuck in trades and I wish I wasn't but they're
down and I'm sort of just waiting - instead of selling them at a loss, I'm waiting until
they go back up.
But every single day they sit there with me waiting - I could be using that money in a
better trade to make more money.
But I can't, I'm stuck.
And it really highlights the importance of this - your money is your primary asset when
you're trading. So most people, when they're trading, they want to have most of that money
working for them.
They want to have it in open trades making money for them.
Why I say that is - when you copy someone and you don't copy open trades, that person
you're copying most probably has most of their money tied up in open trades.
It's always good to keep some of your money back in case there's a great opportunity so
you have some extra money, so you can go in on that one...
Or if you have a stop loss which you need to extend - so you have to use some of that
money to guarantee your stop loss.
But generally, people will use most of their money in active trades because their money
is what makes them more money.
So if you don't copy the open trades, the next trade Wesley makes - we're going to wait because
I didn't copy open trades...
We're going to wait and we're only going to copy trades - his new trades.
The thing is, he is probably going to have to close one of these old positions before
he opens a new one.
So if I go to his statistics here, look if I go to Wesley's statistics - we see the normal
things - his performance, here we see the risk scores and the copiers, his trades ... At
the bottom here, you see this one ... 3.76 trades per week.
What that means is, basically, on average Wesley makes 3.76 new trades per week - he
opens 3.76 new trades per week.
So really, you can do the maths on that and you can look at it.
His portfolio - these are his open trades.
We can probably bet that if we copy him now, and we don't click copy open trades...
3.76 times per week, he will start to use some of that money because he has to ... (some
of that money we've copied him with) do you see what I mean?
Because he has to close one of his old positions and then open a new one - that's the one we'll
copy, so a bit of our money will be used in that.
So if we look here, at what he's invested.
Let's say the first one - AMD.
He's bought AMD - this is the proportion of his money that he's used in that trade.
So he's uploaded say $1000, yeah...
He's used 8.69% of that in an AMD trade - he's currently losing 15.74% - the value currently,
that makes it 7.20% because it's that minus that much which equals that...
So 8.69%.
If you look at them - none of his trades ... That's a big one - he's used 8.69% of
his money on that trade, that's quite a big one - if you go down, look, he's using 3.9%
of it on Ripple, he's using 1.49% on first Solar.
So when he makes a new trade, we can sort of say it might be roughly around that - maybe
5%.
So if he makes one next week, that'll be like, the next trade he makes will be the first
one that we use some of our copy money with him.
If that makes sense ... So basically, he'll open a new trade - it'll probably be about
5% of his money which would be ... let's say we've copied him with $1000, O.K - we've copied
him - which is a lot ... - let's say we've copied him with 1000, that means he would
use 5% - $50 of our money on that new trade.
So whilst we've copied him with $1000, we have to wait for him to close old trades and
open new ones to start using up that money in active trades, and that may take a few
weeks until all of the money we've copied him with actually is being used by him trading
for us, you see...
So sometimes people do - they don't click "Copy open trades" and the first few weeks,
you've got to be warned, can be quite slow.
I mean, you might just be waiting, depending on how much the trader you're copying trades,
and how often he opens new trades - you might be waiting, you know, 3 weeks / a month, you
know - something like that - It could be less, could be more ... Until he starts to use your
$1000 or whatever it is, in actual open new positions, and he'll take it a bit at a time.
$50 there, maybe he opens 10%, uses $100 ... Maybe he opens another 50, 5% one, that's another
$50 - that's $200 of your money, so far, is being used in active open trades.
So, be aware of that...
Now the way you can see that is, let's say I go to my portfolio, and let's say I go to
Jay...
Here's all the trades that I'm copying in Jay, so Jay's opened all of these trades for me...
I haven't done any of this manually - I'm copying him, so he's ... these trades are
all open, and if we go down to the bottom, on the left, you can see here - "Total Open
- $272.28" That is the amount of the money I've copied him with which is currently being
used in open trades, O.K.
So you can check this ... If you want to, if you've copied someone and you know you've
copied them with $1000 and it's going very slow - you don't seem to see a lot of profit,
you're not sure what's going on...
Go to your portfolio, click on that trader's name, go to the bottom, and on the left, find
this "Total Open" bit and see how much of the money - how much of your $1000 is actually
in open trades...
Now it might be that he's not doing very well, and he's just not making you a lot of money,
or it might be that there hasn't been enough time yet that your money is actually being
used in active trades.
It will - it will catch up, and once it's caught up, it will stay caught up, you know...
It just takes a while to get that going sometimes.
Right, the benefits of not copying open trades - I mean when I started, it seemed to me like
it was really, sort of a way to have a clean slate - "I don't know about his past trades,
I don't want any part of that, I just want to see what he does from now on..."
Initially I thought, yeah, that's a good idea...
Now, I mean it depends ... It really depends on the trader, on what they're doing, on you
know, what I think about them...
But, I'm not sure about that anymore.
But it's a way - it's valid, but it might take a while for it to start up, or to really
get going.
Alright, the other way we can do that is to copy the open trades.
So let's say we go back to Wesley ... Again we click 'Copy' and we copy open trades.
So, what will happen then.
So when we copy open trades, we go back to his portfolio... and we can see all these
stocks that we looked at before.
these are all Wesley's currently open trades.
We're going to copy all of them, alright...
So, again, we look at the first one - it's AMD and he's buying, and 8.69% of his money,
he used for AMD.
What will happen straight away is that we will make a trade with 8.69% of our money
that we've copied him with.
So let's say that we've copied him with $100 - it's just easier because of the decimals
... So we've copied him with $100 - that means we'll use $8.69 on a trade with AMD, and we'll
be buying it.
Same thing, same proportion, same everything.
What's different is that - if you look at the price, we will always open those trades
with the current market price.
You know, Etoro doesn't go back in time for us or start skewing things, and it doesn't
open our trades at the same price the person we've copied opens.
It can't do that, it has to open them at the market value now - the current market value.
So if you look at AMD, he's actually got 1,2,3,4,5,6 open trades with AMD.
When you see it in the portfolio, it groups them all, you know...
It has AMD, but if you click into AMD, you'll see all the little sub-trades which he's actually
made.
Normally when these people trade, when good traders trade, they don't just say "Right,
I'm going to buy AMD, I'm going to put all my money on it right now."
It's what I did last time with RAD and got in trouble ... They're not doing that, they
don't say "I'm gonna put all my money on it in one go - there's my huge bet!"
They'll buy a bit, and wait... and if it's going up they'll buy a bit more... and if
it's going up they'll buy a bit more - maybe use more leverage, and .... so they go into
trades slowly, and generally come out of them slowly as well.
So that confused me in the beginning.
"Why are there 6??" you know...
So that's what they're doing.
They have one overall AMD position, but in that, they've got lots of trades building
up our out of a trade.
So, he's bought this one - 28th of the 6th - 2 months ago he bought AMD at 13.56 - it's
gone down since then.
Next to it, you can see the current price, here.
Currently AMD is at 12.20, so it's gone down, so look, he's losing money - he's lost 21%.
And as it's gone down, boom, boom, boom, boom, the most recent one here is the 11th
August, he bought it at 12.01 - it's now at 12.19, so he's made money.
If we open, if we copy him - we copy Wesley and we "Copy open Trades" it will copy all
these amounts - this is 1.24% of his amount, of the money he has is on that trade.
0.99% of the money is on that one.
1.49 - we'll copy those exact proportions but we will open them all - all of these numbers
will instantly be this number here - we would buy them all at the current market value.
O.K?
And that would happen for all of his trades...
And what are the benefits of this one?
So, if you look at - this is a bit counter intuitive - I remember when I first started,
sometimes I'd see people, you know on their profile, on their feed - if you go to their
feed, sometimes here, look ... They have this little bit about them "Always copy open trades
to get the best benefit."
blah blah blah blah blah...
Sometimes I'd see on traders, you know "If I'm in the red, copy open trades" and I used
to think "Well what's the sense in that?
I don't want to copy anyone who's losing money, why would I copy a losing position!?" because
I didn't quite understand how that works...
If, here, - here he's at -15.61% on that trade.
What that means is when he bought AMD it was, say, here ... O.K?
The price went down, and AMD is now at this price, so he's lost this money, because he
thought it was going to go up - it was a "Buy" position and it's gone down - he's lost money.
If I copy those trades when he's in the red, he's lost money ... I will actually be buying
at a lower price than him.
So it's a better trade than he makes.
He's in the red, and I buy it - I buy it at the cheaper price.
Now he's betting that it's going to go back up - that's why he hasn't closed the trade,
he's kept the open trade because he's basically - Wesley's betting that AMD's going to go
back up.
Most likely will, huge company, good call...
But, he's betting it will go back up, he's bought it here, he'll start making profit
when it's above that.
If I copy him and he's in the red, I buy at the lower price - by the time it gets to here,
I'll be making much more profit than Wesley...
So, that's kind of the good thing.
On the other side, his Apple trade is 5.60% in ... he's actually making profit.
So I will ... That means that he bought here, and now the market is here - see he's made
this much profit.
If I copy open trades, I will actually buy here - so I will buy at a slightly worse price
than him - damnit ... So if you look at it there's red and there's green, there's red,
red, red, red, there's green, green, red, green green - it's a bit of a mixed bag, you
know...
It's a bit of a mixed bag so you've got to sort of weigh that up and say "Alright ... am
I going to make money overall or lose, and that's a lot of maths...
To put your mind at rest, firstly if there's someone where all of the trades are in red,
and you're thinking "Yeah I 'm gonna copy this guy because all of the trades are in
red - I'm just going to buy everything at a lower price!"
Watch out that he's not buying companies like that Rite Aid I bought where they're just
going down for 7 months and it might go to 0...
You've obviously got to be a bit sensible.
If someone's losing hundreds of percent on every trade and they're in red, maybe look
for someone else, maybe actually find someone where they're not just completely making losses.
But, if you do see some losses and you do see some greens, and you're worried and you
can't do the maths - you know I look at Wesley first of all because overall 87.65 ...
do you know what I mean...
So you look at his overall stats - 7.05% profit 2015, 148 in 2016, 36.04 , and if you look
at this, when he's made wins, his wins are winning, and when he's making losses, he knows
how to do risk management so his losses are small - that's good...
If he does start losing, he manages to contain it.
So really, don't - you know to start worrying too much about the maths of should I copy
open trades - am I in profit or loss - are most of them winning or most of them losing?
Really it's never going to be on these individual trades that you either - it makes you
or breaks you.
when you copy a trader, you're not relying on one huge trade to sort of make everything
O.K...
And sort of you have to work out all these minute maths...
You copy someone - really you look at their overall statistics and overall are they making
money?
Overall, are they losing money?
Overall is this person someone I trust?
It's never going to be one big trade that makes it or breaks it, it's going to be lots
of small, clever, consistently made trades.
So this, whilst it is, you know "Oh I could do the maths and work out if overall I'm going
to be in profit or loss."
Not that relevant, because you're looking at how they trade over time...
So those are the major differences really.
And it's up to you which one you do.
I know I've changed my strategy all the time - the only thing which I think is a bit ... sometimes
I see people asking people they're copying this question - it would have been useful
for me to know because it's very frustrating is that part about if you don't copy open
trades, be aware that it might be a few weeks before they're - the person you're copying
closes their old trades and is opening new ones because you're only going to be copying
the new trades they do and therefore it's going to take a while to use up that money
you've copied them with.
So it's a bit unfair on the person you're copying if you don't know that, and after
sort of two, three weeks, you're still thinking "Man, they're not making any money for me!"
You know, go and check that thing I showed you in the portfolio - see how much of your
money is actually being used.
If all the money you've copied them with is being used, and it's still really not going
anywhere after a couple of months, maybe look at copying someone else...
But, you know, be aware of that because it's a bit unfair and that's not explained anywhere...
And once I worked it out, I though "Oh damn."
Because there's been a few people where I copied and then after like 5 weeks, I thought
"Well they're not doing anything."
And really it's because they didn't open new trades very fast as a trader, and it would
have been useful if I'd known that before...
So... that's it.