FxPro SuperTrader

FxPro was launched in 2006 and is currently the world’s leading forex broker, with clients in over 150 countries. However, the SuperTrader platform that is the subject of our review was only launched at the end of 2013. This social investing platform aims to connect FxPro clients and investors with experienced traders and trading strategy leaders. This allows investors to view and automatically copy the trades of these experienced traders into their own / FxPro account.

The SuperTrader platform is exclusively available to FxPro clients, so you first need to open a regular account and then your SuperTrader account will be created. These are common procedures and are usually straightforward. However, it is important to note that SuperTrader accounts can only be denominated in USD at this time. Hence, if you were to choose a different base currency for your main FxPro account (British pounds, for example), you would actually end up going through 2 extra currency conversion procedures if you fund your account in USD.

Therefore, if you only want to use SuperTrader, make sure you choose USD as your base currency everywhere. The fact that the platform is currently only available in US dollars is a minor limitation, especially for non-US dollar investors, as obviously their investments will all be in US dollars. (In the early stages of investing, you do this in USD and you can hedge, so this feature does not take most investors out of their comfort zone with these types of social copy services.)

It is also important to note that since May 5, 2014 (i.e. after we opened our accounts), FxPro has increased the minimum funds for new clients to $ 50,000, which must be in the SuperTrader platform account. Alternatively, though, you can deposit $ 10,000 and use their lines of credit to increase your capital to $ 50,000. That is, the minimum deposit requirements are now quite high. On October 13, 2014, they changed this again, reducing the minimum investment amount to $ 30,000 and the credit factor to 2. So this also means that with a minimum deposit of $ 10,000, you will still meet the new minimum requirement with a credit factor of 2 ( $ 10,000 deposit + $ 20,000 credit).

Who are the leaders of the SuperTrader platform

As mentioned above, the main purpose of the SuperTrader platform is to give investors access to “experienced” forex traders. So who are they? At FxPro, these “leaders” are either legal entities or individuals who act as strategy providers and send real-time trading signals using the SuperTrader platform. It is important to note that all leaders send signals from “real” trading accounts, so they are all risking their money as well.

In addition, FxPro reminds us that Leaders go through a rigorous approval process that closely monitors their trading strategy to ensure compliance and adherence to FxPro’s risk management principles. Leaders are paid 5% of their profits for any winning trades they make in the accounts of their copying investors. Payment is made on a monthly basis.

Since the service was very young at the time of our first review and most of the leaders had a short history of doing business at FxPro, there was no opportunity to comment on the careful selection of leaders at the time. We are compelled to talk about this because another shopping social service we discussed earlier also claimed to subject its trading leaders to scrutiny. But in reality, their verification was rather weak. That is, over time, many of their main performers ended up draining their deposits using the Martingale strategy and were removed from the platform (which the new investors obviously could not have known about).

However, the remuneration structure of FxPro seems to be fairer and may avoid this type of practice described above, and so far (we have been monitoring the list of strategies (traders) of the SuperTrader platform for 11 months), although we have observed, as some systems have been removed, the management of this aspect of the service seems to be fairly fair. Our own results have also been positive so far.

We will continue to monitor and update this review if any facts or opinions change (which we do with all of our reviews). As the first update (in October 2014) after our first review, we noted that some strategies (traders) have already appeared and disappeared. The number of strategies to copy has also dropped to less than 10, although FxPro seemed to be quite active, and they are quickly removing strategies that no longer meet their criteria (and whose performance is degrading) without serious damage to investors yet. But in March 2015, the FxPro service again increased the selection of strategies to 20. Thus, although some strategies are present and work well throughout the year, the service manages to correctly mix strategies of different levels and a number of (traders) SuperTrader are still “newbies” ( less than 6 months of activity).

One of the most positive facts about the FxPro SuperTrader leaders is not only that they trade with their own money, but also that you can see how much money they are investing. This is quite a unique phenomenon as other social trading networks usually do not provide this information. In fact, most leader accounts have balances of $ 10,000 or more.

There are currently about 15 strategies (traders) that you can view and copy. They are divided into 2 types: FxPro strategies and third party services. The difference is pretty obvious – the SuperTrader strategies listed on FxPro were developed by FxPro itself, while the third-party strategies are created by leaders outside of FxPro. So far, our best results have come from copying some of the third-party service strategies.

Leaderboard / Strategy Selection Copied to FxPro SuperTrader

When reviewing any social trading and copy trading service, it is important to look at the data and features offered to investors to help them analyze past performance and decide which traders (called “strategies” on the FxPro platform) to copy.

On the SuperTrader strategy page, you can compare all strategies using key metrics such as weekly average return, maximum drawdown and investor rating. For each strategy, you can expand the page to get additional information, including a description of the strategy, performance charts, time and historical statistics such as average win / lose trades in dollars, profit factor, net profit / loss in dollars, and percentage of winning trades.

This is not the most complete list of statistics (for example, the average duration of trades, the number of copiers and the pairs traded in hindsight can be good additions). However, performance charts and historical statistics will be more than enough for most investors to make informed decisions to choose strategies that fit their risk profile. In addition, all past trades can be downloaded in Excel format, which is very useful if you want to do your own offline analysis.

Current open trades are also displayed and all data is updated in real time. In fact, it is fair to say that FxPro SuperTrader is a completely transparent service, even including the actual amount of USD that the leaders themselves have earned or lost.

Features of risk and capital management on the SuperTrader platform

Once you have decided which strategy to copy, you can set a number of parameters on SuperTrader to help you manage your risk:

• Allocate USD Amount, the amount you want to allocate from your account to the strategy (minimum amount is $ 500, although several strategies may require more). Please note that all transactions will be copied proportionally. So if you allocate $ 500, and the assets of the strategy are $ 5,000, then when the leader opens 1 lot, 0.1 lot will be opened on your account.
• A “multiplier” of 1 or 2, which you can use to increase your risk (up to October 13, 2014, a multiplier of 3 was available, but has been removed by FxPro).
• “Maximum Loss Percentage Strategy” the loss that you can afford, followed by closing all trades and stopping copying the strategy (between 5 and 30% is allowed).
• The Trailing Stop (Assets) Percentage is similar to the previous stop but takes earnings into account so that you can stay profitable.

The FxPro SuperTrader User Guide explains this in more detail, but overall, the money and risk management options are intuitive and offer ample opportunity to manage your account based on your personal risk profile.

Once you have signed up for a strategy, you can monitor the performance of your account in real time, and if you want, you can manually close all trades that were opened by the strategy (trader).

SuperTrader platform costs

Registration with FxPro SuperTrader is completely free and the spreads are the same as with a regular FxPro account (they are standard and competitive in the industry). Only when you copy the strategies of third-party services do you have to pay 5% of the profitable trades. We are not opposed to paying for profits, and we believe that this approach is very fair. It can be argued that the fee should be based on the peak performance of your account, but experience shows that this approach pushes certain traders into high risk when they are trying to recover from large losses. Overall, the costs of FxPro SuperTrader are low when compared to other similar services.

When we talk about costs, we always try to mention lagging behind in our reviews. The lag (for those who are not familiar with social trading) is the difference in the price that you get into your account and the price that the trader you copy gets. Since traders / strategies on SuperTrader all use FxPro trading accounts (as you do), the lag should be expected to be lower than on social trading platforms that attract different brokers. Based on our experience at SuperTrader, this is still the case. We notice a slight lag, but on average it is 1 pip or even less in the case of an immediate sell (i.e. open the trade and immediately close).

FxPro support

As mentioned, we had some problems setting up a SuperTrader account. I believe the support we received via email and from our manager was good. Unfortunately, phone support can only be described as incompetent and unhelpful (“Reporting a problem does not solve the problem”). Their response seemed to be scripted, so it’s better to use email (so they have time to find the right person for specific answers to specific questions) or use the services of an account manager. Frequently asked questions and help are also available, and their FxPro SuperTrader User Guide.pdf (click here to access) is probably the most detailed and helpful we have seen among social trading platform tutorials. The lack of a demo account, on the other hand, is a disadvantage, as it is always better if there is an opportunity to try something first before investing “real” cash. However, you can start with a small investment of $ 500 or more.

Social Features

Social Trading covers everything from exchanging trading ideas with other investors to automatically copying trades from other investors. The FxPro SuperTrader platform approached this in terms of copying, so the functions offered to interact with other investors and / or strategy leaders are quite limited. Leaders can change their descriptions (although we have not seen any of them do this regularly), while investors can evaluate the strategies they are subscribed to. Personally, we like to occasionally receive news from the traders we copy, as it provides some additional insight into their trading behavior. However, since the quality of the traders here is good, we believe this would be an added privilege. The ratings are a good addition as they provide feedback from real clients who have copied or copied a strategy (trader) with “real” money.

FxPro SuperTrader Review. Advantages

• Leaders Verified by FxPro
• All leaders trade from real money accounts
• All data (including the amount of dollars) is completely transparent
• There are good quality leaders for copying
• Good risk / account management
• Leaders are paid for profitable trades
• Very sensible user manual
• Trade history can be downloaded in Excel format
• Low cost and reasonable lag
• Fully cohesive service with an intuitive interface

FxPro SuperTrader Review. Disadvantages

• SuperTrader accounts can only be in USD
• No demo account
• High initial investment required (min. $ 10,000 deposit + $ 40,000 credit line)
• Some strategies (traders) require a high minimum investment ($ 10,000)
• Still new platform and limited leader trading history
• No way to interact with leaders

Overall, FxPro SuperTrader is a social investment platform for more serious investors. This is not for people looking for a $ 50 or $ 100 gambling game, but for those looking to invest $ 1,000 or more. The interface is intuitive and all the data provided about leading traders and strategies that you can copy is completely transparent. The FxPro service also pre-selects strategies (traders) and controls them. This means that the picklist is fairly manageable and the statistics provided are helpful. You can manage your risk with each strategy quite easily. The main caveat is that due to the fact that the SuperTrader platform is quite new, there is no historical data available for a sufficiently long period, and therefore, in the long term, the success of strategies is more difficult to predict. But, however, it is very positive that they all invest significant amounts of their own money in transactions, which can be perceived as a mitigating circumstance for the lack of historical data.

As usual with social trading reviews, please note that this review is based on our personal experience of using the FxPro SuperTrader platform as a live client with real money investments. The images provided are from our real account.