Guide

Copy trading: why your results differ from the strategy's

You copy a strategy that shows +3% for the month, and your account shows +2.2%, or on the contrary a little more. This is usually neither an error nor an anomaly: a copier account never reproduces a strategy to the last cent. This guide reviews the most common reasons, and what depends on you.

1. The date you started

A strategy's performance is counted from its launch. Yours is counted from the day you started copying.

Gains compound. A strategy showing +100% since its launch has not made +100% for someone who joined it last year.
You start at a specific point in the cycle. If you start during an unrealised fall (see our guide on floating drawdown), you will not see the same curve as someone who started earlier.
Positions already open are not copied. With the “Copy Opened Trades” option turned off, as our setup guide recommends, your copy only starts with new positions. The first month is therefore often incomplete compared with the strategy's.

2. The fee on profits

A strategy's published performance is usually calculated before the fee taken from copiers. If the fee is 20% of profits, a +3% month for the strategy gives about +2.4% on the copier account.

The fee is not taken trade by trade, but on the settlement day. At Vantage, the strategy provider chooses daily, weekly (on Saturday) or monthly (on the 1st of the month) settlement. Depending on the day you compare, the fee for the current period may therefore not have been taken yet.

With a high-water mark system, no fee is taken as long as your copy's gains do not exceed their previous high. After a fall, the gap with the strategy can therefore narrow for a while. See our guide on the fee and the high-water mark.

3. The amount and the minimum position size

In proportional copying, each position is scaled down to the size of your capital. But brokers impose a minimum size: at Vantage, a position cannot be smaller than 0.01 lot.

With small capital, some positions become too small to be copied, or are rounded up.
When rounded up, they weigh more heavily than intended on your account: your risk increases, and your results move away from the strategy's, for better or worse.

That is the reason for a minimum amount. The larger the capital, the more faithful the copy.

4. Your copy settings

A few settings change the result a great deal:

The copy mode and the multiplier. In Equity Ratio mode with a multiplier of 1, your positions are, in proportion to your capital, the same size as the strategy's. With another mode or another multiplier, this is no longer the case.
The global stop loss. If it triggers, the copy stops (see our guide on the global stop loss). You then do not benefit from any recovery.
Orders added manually. A take profit or stop loss placed on a position, a position you close yourself, or your own trades on the same account: all of this makes your account diverge from the strategy.

5. Execution

There is a short delay between the moment the strategy opens a position and the moment it is reproduced on your account. The price may have moved slightly, especially during economic announcements or fast moves. On one position, the difference is tiny; over hundreds, it becomes slightly visible.

6. Deposits and withdrawals

A deposit or withdrawal along the way changes the size of your positions from that point on. Published performance is adjusted for deposits and withdrawals, but your account balance reflects them. Compare percentages over the same period, not amounts.

How to compare correctly

Compare the same period: from your start date, not from the strategy's launch.
Deduct the fee from the strategy's figures before comparing.
Compare percentages, adjusted for your deposits and withdrawals, not amounts.
Check your settings: mode, multiplier, global stop loss, options turned off.

If the gap remains large after these checks, it is often a setting. Go through your setup again step by step.

And at PlanetFinance?

The performance shown on this site is the strategy's, before the 20% fee charged on the profits of copier accounts, and calculated on closed trades only. The fee is settled once a month, on the 1st, and only on gains above your copy's high-water mark. Everything is detailed on the How the figures are calculated page. The €1,000 minimum is there so that each position is copied at the right size, without rounding to the minimum lot.