ZULUTRADE REVIEW: PROS AND CONS OF A TOP COPYTRADING PLATFORM
ZuluTrade is a leading social & wealth management platform offering an innovative online trading approach. It provides a user-friendly and streamlined Copy Trading experience with exciting features such as ZuluGuard, Social feed and multiple asset classes, including Cryptocurrencies, Stock CFDs, Forex, Commodities, and Indices.
Whether a seasoned or novice trader, ZuluTrade offers a broad suite of tools and resources to help you make informed trading decisions. In this article, we describe how to use it from the Philippines.
What is ZuluTrade and How it Works
ZuluTrade is a social - wealth management platform with CopyTrading at its core, allowing its users to follow and copy the trading activity of other traders. It boasts a network of over 90,000 traders from more than 200 countries, making it one of the largest social trading platforms worldwide.
The concept behind ZuluTrade is simple: Investors can follow and copy the other traders' activity, referred to as signal providers or Traders. Signal providers are experienced traders who have developed a trading strategy worth copying. They are ranked based on their past performance, and new investors can choose to follow and copy the trades of the top-ranked signal providers.
How to Open an Account with ZuluTrade from the Philippines
If you're interested in checking out the top traders available at ZuluTrade, there are a few key steps you'll need to follow.
First, register at zulutrade.com (You may try a Demo Account). You'll be requested to provide basic information, such as your name, email address, password, country of residence (In case you live outside of the Philippines), and phone number. You'll also need to agree to the platform's terms and conditions.
Once you've registered, you'll need to verify your account. ZuluTrade requires all users to complete a verification process to comply with regulatory requirements by uploading proof of ID and address, such as a passport and a utility bill.
After verifying your account, you can log in to ZuluTrade and explore the platform. To start trading, you must open or have an account with one of their collaborating brokers. Remember that ZuluTrade is a CopyTrading platform used as a feature by many brokers simultaneously, for example, Fxview or AvaTrade.
You can deposit funds into your broker account using various payment methods, including credit cards, bank transfers, and e-wallets. However, watch out for conversion fees if you transfer with your Peso balance (Depending on your chosen base currency).
Once your CopyTrading account is set up, one of the first things you'll want to do is find successful traders to follow. ZuluTrade makes this step easy by listing the available traders and their performance metrics. Also, you may use the search function to filter and find traders specialising in particular instruments, trading strategies, and historical performance, among other indicators.
Once you've identified the traders you want to follow, you can automatically use the Copy Trading feature to replicate their trades in your account.
ZuluTrade's Trading Experience
Trading Platforms: An Analysis of ZuluTrade's Interface
ZuluTrade's platform revolves around traders and their financial indicators based on their trading history. Each trader's assessment has four sections:
Overview: It displays various performance metrics that provide a brief insight into the trader's performance and risk management. The indicators displayed in this section are the total investment following, Return on Investment, Total Profit, Open Positions Performance, Trading Weeks, Maximum Drawdown and Number of Investors, among others.
Trading: It displays the trader's historical performance chart and profit and loss over time. Additionally, you can view the details of their open positions, including the traded instruments, entry price, current price, and profit/loss.
Social: A social feed that allows traders to post regular updates and interact closely with their followers. Although this might seem irrelevant, it can provide valuable insights into the trader's overall approach and level of engagement with their community. For example, by monitoring the social feed, you can see how traders respond to questions, handle losses, and adjust their strategies based on feedback from their followers. People ask questions, greet, and ask for updates on losing trades or directly ask for a change in the strategy.
Live Followers: The page displays the trader's number of live followers (investors) and the total amount of money they have invested in the trader's strategy.
Overall, the page provides a comprehensive overview of the trader's trading activity, making it easier for potential copiers to evaluate their performance and decide whether to follow them.
Trading Instruments and Assets: What Can You Trade on ZuluTrade?
ZuluTrade has partnered with numerous brokers that offer various trading instruments and assets, including Forex, stocks, commodities, indices, and cryptocurrencies. Although as we have explained previously, the platform's main feature is its CopyTrading feature, meaning that the whole point of investing via ZuluTrade is to follow traders and copy trades in any of these financial markets.
Fees and Commissions: The Cost of Trading with ZuluTrade
ZuluTrade pricing is transparent. Fees depend on the broker's account the investor has selected to trade with. There are brokers in ZuluTrade’s ecosystem that cover the cost in full, thus making the copy trading service free of charge for the investors. Other brokers add a spread markup to investors' accounts after signing a letter of agreement. Your broker or ZuluTrade support agents can answer this question easily and quickly via live chat.
ZuluTrade displays various performance metrics that provide a brief insight into the trader's performance and risk management.
ZuluTrade's Platform Usability
Performance Metrics and Analytics: How to Evaluate Traders on ZuluTrade
One of the main features of ZuluTrade is its performance metrics and analytics. These metrics allow you to evaluate the performance of signal providers and make informed decisions. There are several indicators: performance, tenure, assets under management, minimum investment, and other ancillary ones, as follows:
Return on Investment (ROI): When selecting a trader to copy, their positive and consistent performance, or ROI, is the primary factor to consider. Negative returns are undesirable (obviously). CopyTrading platforms typically rank traders based on their performance over various timeframes. Still, it would be best if you were cautious of exceptionally high returns that may be due to luck or excessively high risk-taking. Further, check the monthly returns to determine whether the performance is consistent. The objective should be to copy a trader who has consistently generated profits over an extended period. Performance is the clearest indicator when selecting a trader to copy.
Tenure: While a successful trader does not necessarily need a ten-year track record, it is still a good sign if they have been active in financial markets for a few seasons.
Assets Under Management (AUM): The AUM rank reflects the signal provider's popularity more reasonably. It shows how much copiers trust that particular trader with their real money. However, having one copier with a significant investment might also be a bad sign since it could be a friend or family of that trader.
Minimum Investment: The available traders on ZuluTrade have a recommended Minimum Investment based on their recommended settings. It helps ensure optimal results and accurate performance tracking. For example, if a trader opens and partially closes a trade, and a copier invests a minimum amount, the gains might not reflect the results correctly. While investing the recommended minimum amount is not compulsory, doing so can help avoid discrepancies in the results and ensure effective copying of the trader's strategy.
Investment Strategy: Does a trader specialise in cryptocurrencies, Forex, stocks, or a combination? Choose a trader whose strategy aligns with your investment preferences.
Maximum Drawdown: You want to look for traders with consistent risk levels that remain the same over time. Consider the maximum drawdown, which is the maximum observed loss from a peak to a trough of a portfolio before it reaches a new peak. Remember, maximum drawdown indicates downside risk over a specified period. In other words, it is the maximum observed so far. For example, a Trader with a 10% return but a maximum drawdown of 30% means that if you start copying at the peak, you will decrease your investment value by 30%.
In conclusion, ZuluTrade's performance metrics and analytics offer a range of indicators to evaluate the performance of signal providers and make informed decisions. By understanding these metrics, you can choose a trader whose strategy aligns with your investment preferences and avoid excessive risk-taking.
CopyTrading Strategies: How to Copy Trades on ZuluTrade
Regarding CopyTrading strategies in ZuluTrade, diversification is the fundamental concept. Diversification implies spreading your investment across different traders, instruments, and markets. The notion behind diversification is to decrease your portfolio's risk and increase your chances of yielding profits sustainably. There are two basic ways to diversify your portfolio:
Track multiple traders specialising in different financial markets. For example, you could follow one trader who focuses on Forex, another who specialises in stocks, and a third who is an expert in cryptocurrencies. By doing this, you can benefit from the expertise of multiple traders and increase your exposure to different markets.
Follow multiple traders who use different trading strategies. For example, you could follow one trader who uses a trend-following strategy, another who employs a value-investing approach, and a third who focuses on technical analysis. Again, this spreads your risk by exposing your portfolio to trading styles in different market conditions.
As a platform that enables traders from various brokers to offer their services, ZuluTrade does not specialise in any particular asset class, such as Forex or Crypto. As a result, you can diversify your investments across a range of asset classes without being limited to a particular market or sector.
Comparison to Other Social Trading Platforms: How ZuluTrade Stacks Up
ZuluTrade is one of several social trading platforms available to traders. So, how does it compare to other platforms?
ZuluTrade offers more than 90k traders to follow and a user-friendly interface compared to other social trading platforms. In addition, the platform's performance metrics and analytics are more extensive than many other platforms, allowing investors to make more informed decisions about which to follow and copy. Last but very important, it is an open ecosystem allowing the freedom of choice; you can connect your existing broker account from broker A, trading in MT4, and copy a trader that uses broker B with MT5, making such "bridges" via their technology create an environment that there is no conflict of interest for their users.
While ZuluTrade has its strengths and weaknesses, it is a solid option for investors looking for a CopyTrading platform that offers a wide range of traders and extensive performance metrics and analytics.