Following someone else’s trades: fees, custody, drawdown, and what the exchange window hides.
The whole catalogue counted: how many copy traders look profitable on the short window an exchange prints, and what their full record says. See the numbers →
The numbers on a copy-trading leaderboard are real, and the exchanges publish the formulas. What is being sold is the sort order. Here is each field, what it is measured against, and the order to read them in — which is close to the reverse of the order they appear.
You copied a leader, and your entry sits worse than theirs — or the trade never opened at all. The exchanges document exactly why, and none of the reasons are deceit. Knowing the mechanism tells you which part of the gap is yours to set.
You did not choose the positions sitting open under your account — the leader did, and now the leader is gone. Here is what happens to those trades, and how to be ready before it does.
The leader's page shows a return; your account shows less. Three separate costs sit between the two — a weekly cut of your profit, an exchange fee on every copied trade, and a spread you never see itemised. Two of them bite whether the week wins or loses.
The marketing page shows a headline return. What you actually receive is an equity curve caught mid-motion, sometimes deep underwater on a position you cannot see. Here is how to size that risk before you press connect.
Across 19,168 deduplicated archived channel messages there is exactly one mention of an API key, and it is a warning. Here is where the money sits in each arrangement, and what can take it.
The exchange publishes the numbers, so verification is not the question here. The question is what a good-looking curve leaves out — and 76 of our 1,186 traders have already answered it.
The difference is not that one is safer. It is which of the four decisions in a trade someone else has already made for you, and what you can still check afterwards.
Copy trading is simple to switch on and easy to misjudge. What actually happens to your money, what you still control, and how to check a trader before you follow them.
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