Being in charge of your own trading destiny is the ultimate for most traders.
The goal for most traders is to become a full-time trader who can live off their profits and be in charge of where and when they work.
This does not happen overnight and in a lot of cases traders far underestimate how much they actually need to learn to start making consistent and regular profits in the markets.
Should You Trade Yourself?
Most understand that jobs such as plumbers, DR’s and lawyers need to undergo a solid amount of education before they can begin earning money from their profession, however with trading these same expectations are often not applied.
Trading stocks or Forex CFD’s like any other profession requires study and commitment if there are going to be long-term and sustainable gains.
A lot of traders don’t have the time or just do not want to put in the hours that are required to master the markets and trade themselves, but they still want the returns the markets offers and to be apart of it.
This is where you need to way up yourself; are you prepared to put in the hours, pick a method like price action trading and then master it?
If not, you may be better taking part in the markets through copy / social trading and copying professional traders
What is Copy trading?
Copy trading allows you to automatically copy positions opened and managed by a selected investor, and this is normally carried out through a social network like eToro.
As a copytrader you are able to find traders that have done all of the work for you and have proven they are making regular profits, and then just copy their trades to make profits.
The cool thing is as a copytrader you are not giving anyone your money, you are just copying the trades of proven traders you are following.
Should You Learn to Trade and Invest With a Professional?
Copying other professional traders is very, very popular.
One of the biggest copy trading and social trading companies; eToro has 7 million traders who use their platforms.
Using a service like eToro allows you to find traders who have a track record of making profits and then copy / follow their trades using part of your capital.
You can also choose many different traders you want to follow and split your capital so that your risk is split and not just on any one trader.
You become your own hedge fund manager, assigning portions of your capital where you see fit to make the very best returns for your capital.
You have a huge range of options to filter down the traders you want to follow, from their trade frequency, amount of profitable trades, what markets they trade and their draw-downs.
We have a much more in-depth lesson on How eToro Copy and Social Trade Works Here
Or you can checkout eToro’s copy trader here;
Should You Trade Yourself and Copy Other Traders?
Being able to take the time to learn to trade correctly, whilst still make returns is probably the ultimate win for a trader.
Taking this approach and using the hedge fund analogy; you are able to assign part of your capital to copying traders who have a proven track record of success and part of your trading cash to yourself to help you learn to trade in the markets.
You can give yourself the chance to master your own trading strategies on a practice demo account whilst giving yourself the time you need to become ready to assign yourself more money.
Read About the Best Trading Charts & What to Look For in a Broker Here
Conclusion
There are no fixed ways to take part in the markets.
Clearly with 7 million customers copytrading, it is very popular, but a lot of traders want to retain the control of being able to call their own shots and make their own trades.
You just have to decide if you have the time and commitment to become a full time trader.
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What is the Difference Between Price Action and Technical Analysis?
eToro in Review – How to Use Copy Trader
