Author Bio

If you’re anything like me, you like to be in control. Maybe it’s my type A personality. Maybe it’s because I’m a middle child. Maybe it’s my background in finance. But, I like to be in control – especially when it comes to my investments. The challenge with many of the financial instruments we invest in, such as mutual funds, ETFs, managed accounts and hedge funds, is that we have to hand over complete control to someone else – a money manager, a portfolio manager – someone else calls all the shots.

Well, I’m happy to tell you about a pretty cool new feature set that we’re releasing to investors in the Trade Leaders program. As you probably know, the Trade Leaders program is different because it’s built to help investors achieve success and profitability in the foreign exchange market – all while giving them complete transparency and control. Here’s the scoop on the new feature set we call “Advanced Controls.”

Today, investors in the program have the ability to control their Trade Leaders portfolio by easily changing, deleting and modifying allocations by Trade Leader. So, at any time if an investor decides they don’t want to follow a particular Trade Leader, they can end the relationship and we automatically close any positions that Trade Leader had open for the investor. Likewise, if an investor wanted to change an allocation in a particular Trade Leader, say, from 30% to 50%, they can do that as well in the click of a button.

The Advanced Controls features take allocation to another level and give the investor the ability to control leverage and drawdown. Don’t want to bother with adjusting these levers? No worries. You don’t have to make any changes. These controls are for those active investors looking for more of a hands-on experience and for fund managers and asset managers who have specific drawdown limitations and leverage caps in their strategy or investment policy guidelines.

What can you do with the new Advanced Controls features?  So glad you asked.

• Think a Trade Leader has tight risk controls and want to set your Drawdown Protection to something other than 30%? You will now have the ability to set Drawdown Protection by Trade Leader. Now you can decide how much risk you are willing to tolerate and can set this control anywhere between a 1% and 90% limit on draw downs.
• Concerned about the maximum level of drawdown that can happen across your entire account? You can see the Account Level Drawdown Protection, calculated based on Leader by Leader Protection and unallocated capital.  This feature shows the maximum drawdown that the account could realize. It takes into account any unallocated capital and is based on the overall account balance.
• Decided that you would like to invest in a Trade Leader but want to scale down on risk? You will be able to set a Leverage Multiplier on a Trade Leader, which allows Investors to reduce the amount of risk on an individual investment.  The Leverage Multiplier may be set to take any level between 10% and 100% of the Trade Leader’s leverage; a 50% multiplier will give you half of the Trade Leader’s leverage level on each trade.
• Worried about over-leveraging and want to limit the leverage that may be taken by your account at any given time? You will have the ability to set a Leverage Cap on the account of up to 5000% (50:1 leverage).  Trades which would put you over this leverage amount will not be taken, but you will start trading again once your leverage is reduced beneath this level.

Many of these controls are customizable per Trade Leader you follow. So, for each Trade Leader in your portfolio, you can set a variety of leverage and drawdown controls based on your appetite for risk. Once again, if you don’t want to set them, you can simply use the pre-set values we’ve determined for you based on the Trade Leader’s strategy and risk management profile.

We’d love to hear from you as you start to use some of these nifty new controls. How is it improving your Trade Leaders experience?

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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.

Author Bio

Last week, Forex analyst John Forman hosted a live webinar about autotrading. John provided his perspective on what should raise some red flags for investors when they’re leveraging automated tools and strategies.

In a nutshell, John talked about the seven perils this type of service. While you can hear the entire webinar here, I wanted to give my thoughts on how relying on automated systems can affect your outlook as a trader and what you want to consider as a potential customer of one of these systems.

My interest lies in how these risks relate to currency investment programs such as the Trade Leaders™ Investment Program. The moves of the Trade Leaders, some of the top currency traders in the world, provide trade signals that appear in your portfolio. But, being prudent in your decision-making requires that you understand the process and why some methods can help you succeed, while others warrant more examination.

Briefly, the seven perils John shared were:

1.     Trading types (actual versus hypothetical)

2.     Knowing your skills and vetting traders/systems

3.     Managing risk

4.     Identifying fees and expenses

5.     Understanding presented performance and returns

6.     Accepting transparency and measurement

7.     Leveraging investor controls

In my opinion, the three most important of these are 2, 3 and 4. Ultimately, if you are comfortable in your abilities as an investor, are aware of the risks present in trades that might be executed automatically and can accurately understand how your returns and performance are measured, you’ll be well poised to take part in a system that offers you the benefits of autotrading. The biggest caution as you look to take advantage of an autotrading system is to know how the fees work. Are you paying on every roundturn? Is the “expert trader” getting paid on volume? Are you paying additional pips to add to the autotrading company’s bottom line? Buyer beware. Do your homework and know how much the service will cost you. Transparency is one of our key cornerstones of the Trade Leaders program. We made a conscious decision to keep our fee structure simple and straightforward and it’s clearly communicated in our marketing materials, on our website and by our team members who talk to new clients every day. You can see it for yourself here.

I welcome your thoughts on autotrading and the perils – or successes – you’ve experienced. What do you see as the most important consideration as you decide to try an autotrading system? I look forward to hearing from you.

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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.