Here's a video I made about how to copy a trader on the social trading site 'Etoro'. It's quite an amazing site (I think), as it lets you set your account to automatically copy more experienced traders. Which is useful for me, as I don't know how to trade manually (well, I'm still learning...)
Popular Investors on Etoro
On, Etoro, anyone can apply to become a 'Popular Investor' - these are the people who other people can set their account to copy automatically. If you get accepted as a popular investor, then there are perks the more people you have copying you. So, for people like me, who just want to find the right people to copy, basically, all you do is go to the 'Copy People' page and you'll see all of the different 'Popular Investors' profiles.
Find out more about the Popular Investor program - http://etoro.tw/2AuEwG3 (affiliate link)
Copying a Popular investor
If you click on their profile, you can see the trader's statistics since then started trading on the site, you can see their risk score (from 1 to 10) and you can see what sort of assets they like to trade as well as info about how often they trade and what percentage of their trades have been profitable etc. It's really clever. There are also search options at the top of the page allowing you to find traders who have made a particular amount of profit, over a particular time, from particular countries, who trade particular asset classes, who have particular risk scores etc etc. Once you find one you like, and who you want to copy, you just go to their profile and click the big 'Copy' button on the right. When you do, a pop up appears and asks how much of your overall money you want to use copying this trader. You select the amount (at the time of writing, the minimum amount you can use to copy someone is $100), and then set a 'Copy Stop Loss' which is like an automatic kill switch on the copy should they lose whatever amount of money you want to specify. You can either click 'Copy open trades' or not (I made a separate video about that one as there are some things to think about concerning that decision) and you click the button to start the copy.
What happens next?
From that point on, every trade they make, with their own money, your account will automatically copy. You'll trade the same assets as they do using the same proportion of your overall copy amount as they used of their overall account size. So, if they made a 10% 'Buy' trade on Apple, you'll make a 'Buy' trade on Apple using 10% of whatever money you chose to copy them with. It copies the proportion of their account size which they used on each trade, rather than the actual dollar value - it's smart. If they set a stop loss on a trade, you'll automatically set the same one. Same for the Take Profit amount. Everything's the same - it's like sitting in school behind the smartest kid and just automatically copying all of their work. For free. Nice.
How to I check whether they're making me profit?
At any time, you can just go to your portfolio, where you'll see the trader you're copying, click on them in your portfolio, and you'll be able to see all of the trades you've copied via them. You'll be able o see your overall profit or loss from copying that trader in your portfolio view.
What happens to the profit they make me?
Again, I've made a separate video about that. Basically, it automatically gets re-used in newer and bigger trades by that person you're copying - the one who made the profit. So, over time, your account size with that trader will grow and your profits (hopefully they're making profits, not losses) will compound over time. Withdrawing your profits can happen at any time you want - either by stopping the copy, or pausing it so that, as they close trades, more and more of the money you're copying them with is freed up from being in active trades, and you can withdraw it to your available balance. From there, you can withdraw it from the system into your bank account or credit card (it depends how you actually credited your account). Whenever you reach the amount you'd like to withdraw, you simply un-pause the copy and you'll start copying all their trades again with whatever money you've chosen to leave copying them.
I really like it as a system - it's given me access to the financial markets and trading whilst I'm still learning how to do it myself. To be honest, I spent about a year trading small amounts manually whilst keeping some of my money copying people, but now, all of my money is just copying people, and it's going really well.
Here's my profile if you'd like to see the results so far. I started only copying people in November 2017 - before that it was a mix of copying people and trading manually myself. The big losses came from my own trades, not theirs :) I'm an affiliate (also really easy to sign up for!) so if you use my link and actually decide to trade, I get a bonus :) http://etoro.tw/2rcYYm0