Actively trading requires thorough research, strong decision-making, and timely execution. One thing it doesn’t need is repeatedly entering your trades across multiple accounts. Trade copiers ensure that you don’t have to place the same trade multiple times if you want it replicated across brokerage or other investment accounts.
What Are Trade Copiers?
A trade copier duplicates trade orders across multiple investment accounts. A copier will instantly replicate your orders, and robust copiers can work with a wide range of orders and accounts.
You can set up a trade copier to duplicate almost any order for almost any account, The following are just a few examples:
- Stocks, mutual funds, options, futures, cryptocurrencies
- Market orders, limit orders, stop-loss orders, trailing stop orders
- Immediate execution, day orders, good til canceled (GTC) orders
- Brokerage accounts, retirement accounts, options accounts
It is important to make sure that a trade copier is set up for duplicating the types of trades you do. Whatever investments you trade, though, there’s almost certainly a good trade copier option.
Why Use Trade Copiers?
The simple answer is that trade copiers eliminate the need to manually enter the same trade multiple times and help diversify accounts. This avoids simple mistakes, like typos, that you might make if manually entering multiple times. It’s also more convenient, and saves a lot of time.
The most important purpose of duplicating trades is to keep your orders and portfolios consistent across your accounts. There are multiple reasons to keep your accounts consistent:
- Portfolio Balance: Duplicate all trades to keep a consistent portfolio balance across retirement accounts, HSA accounts and brokerage accounts (to the extent possible).
- Repeat Trades: Create identical trades across brokerage accounts that were set up at different times, or are held by different institutions/platforms.
- Limit Orders: Repeat individual limit orders, so you can take full advantage of an opportunity even across accounts with different portfolios.
- Stop-Loss Orders: Update individual stop-loss orders across accounts, adjusting how you protect a single position regardless of the account’s overall portfolio.
Trade copiers are also regularly used in automated trading strategies, but this usually isn’t how individual retail traders leverage these tools. For the retail trader, the value of a trade copier lies in its ability to duplicate trades across different accounts.
When Not to Use Trade Copiers
This isn’t to say that trade copiers are right in all situations. Specifically, there are two situations where these tools shouldn’t be used.
First, orders placed in an actively traded account shouldn’t be replicated in a passive investment account. Active trade orders shouldn’t be replicated in a passive retirement account that only holds the S&P 500, for example.
Second, trade copiers may not be suitable for day trading. Many day trading strategies require near-instant market orders. Even the few milliseconds it takes to duplicate an order could result in non-ideal trades. Any negative effect in this risky type of trading can be especially costly.
For almost all active trades, outside of particularly time-sensitive day trades, a trade copier can be a great tool.
What to Look for in a Trade Copier
While trade copiers all duplicate trade orders, they don’t all do so equally. You’ll want to consider a few important factors when selecting one to use.
Primary Platform Integration
Choose a trade copier that’s built for your preferred trading platform. Whether you prefer NinjaTrader, TradingView or something else, you’ll want a trade copier that integrates easily with the primary account that you place orders in. This will be called your “master account” (or something similar) by the trade copier.
All Accounts Included
The trade copier should be able to include all of the accounts that you want trade orders duplicated in. Whether you have accounts with traditional brokerages, online retail trading platforms or both, check that they can be included.
(Note: Certain accounts may have restrictions that prevent certain trades from being duplicated in them. This could be due to IRS regulations, federal regulations, or brokerage policy.)
Flexible Options
Just because you want to copy some trades doesn’t necessarily mean you want to copy all trades. You may want certain trade orders sent to all accounts, other orders sent to some accounts, and some not duplicated at all.
A trade copier should make these adjustments easy. With only a few clicks, you ought to be able to select what trade orders are duplicated, and where they’re duplicated to.
Advanced Features
As an active trader, you undoubtedly do more than place only simple buy and sell orders. You might resubmit rejected orders, use various at the money (ATM) strategies, mitigate risk with offsetting positions, or use any number of other tactics.
Your trade copier should be able to copy trades as you want them duplicated. If you regularly offset positions, look for a copier that can offset orders. If you regularly submit orders, look for a copier that’ll track order status and resubmit rejected ones automatically.
A Trade Copier for NinjaTrader
Duplicate Account Actions from Affordable Indicators is the leading trade copier for NinjaTrader. It seamlessly integrates into the NinjaTrader platform, and duplicates orders between NinjaTrader and almost anywhere else you might have an account.
The trade copier offers plenty of flexible options and advanced features, including those mentioned here and others, which can be easily adjusted when necessary. You’ll also find a detailed dashboard for tracking orders, and that Affordable Indicators is an established name with a loyal following of trailers.
If you actively trade on NinjaTrader but have other investment accounts, learn more about how the Duplicate Account Actions could streamline your order placement. Set it up today, and tomorrow’s trades could be automatically sent to all your accounts. Here’s to trading.