Copy trading risks
Copying a profitable trader does not copy their profit. A copy arrives later, at a different size and price, in an account with its own limits. This is what to check before you allocate, and what to expect after.
Why a copy does worse than the original
Every copy is placed after the trader’s own fill, so it pays the move in between plus slippage. The faster a trader turns positions over, the more that gap eats: very short holding times and thousands of trades are why HyperBase warns about traders who look algorithmic, and why Copy Score marks copyability down for them.
Copy quality on each strategy’s page measures this directly: slippage against the mid when the copier decided, and the delay after the trader’s fill.
Reading a track record
A high PnL over one short window can be a single lucky trade. Look across windows, at win rate together with the number of trades, at Sharpe ratio and above all at maximum drawdown: a trader who once lost 60% can do it again, and at your leverage cap it reaches you too.
Check what the record is made of. The markets behind a trader’s results and their completed trades show whether it is one market or many, many small wins or a few large ones.
Sizing and limits
Size each strategy so that its worst drawdown is one you can sit through. A lower max leverage than the trader uses shrinks every position in proportion; the adverse-entry cap skips entries the price has already run away from; market lists keep the strategy to what you understand. Spreading capital over several traders with different styles evens out one trader’s bad stretch.
What copying cannot protect you from
Copied positions can be liquidated, and a trader’s exit is copied only when they exit. Pausing a strategy stops new copies but leaves its positions open, and an expired authorization stops trading without closing anything. Watch your account, not only the trader.