ZuluTrade accounts and risk management

In the "My Account" section, you can see all of the ZuluTrade user interface screens to manage your account settings, see any currently open trades and view your trading history.

Your account settings determine how you allocate your funds to signal providers and the risk you take on each trader and on eacy currency pair (the settings tab is only visible when you slide the cursor to advanced mode).

After you've selected the signal providers you want to track, you have to set a level of risk for each trader. ZuluTrade allows you to allocate your risk in a "custom" mode or an "auto" mode.

In auto mode, the number of lots per position is automatically adjusted according to the risk level you defined, and you can also define the maximum number of trades that will be opened. In custom mode, you must enter the number of lots you want for each trade and the maximum number of open positions you'll allow for each trader.

In the right column, you can see three small icons:

The lock allows you to take control of trades initiated by the signal provider. Once it is enabled, the signal provider can no longer intervene on trades.

The clock allows you to only take a trader's signals on specific days or times.

Click on the little pencil to bring up the advanced settings.

This window allows you to configure your risk level on each currency pair. You can choose: to only trade buy or sell orders, the number of micro lots per trade, the number of trades, the maximum number of lots for all combined trades, to reverse-trade (if the trader takes a buy, your account will take a sell), the stop loss and take profit limits. The "Offset Pips" column allows you to take trades that are offset from the signal, for example, if you set a negative value of 5 pips, your trade will be executed only if the trade signal provider is losing 5 pips - this will therefore improve your overall performance!

To help you assess how your settings will affect your account's overall risk level, ZuluTrade provides you with a "Margin Call-o-Meter" indicator. This indicator assesses your risk of receiving a margin call (which basically means that your account is completely empty) based on the historical performance of your signal providers and the settings you have chosen.

The "Margin Call-o-Meter" is certainly useful, but it also has a few disadvantages, because it is based on historical data. You've probably heard the saying that "past performance is not indicative of future results"! Signal providers may change their strategy at one point and their new strategy will not be reflected in their past trades.

The ZuluGuard feature protects your account from any undesirable behaviour by the traders you follow. It allows you to set the maximum loss that you'll be subjected to in terms of: your capital, a single trade, or all open trades. If any of these limits are reached, you can have ZuluTrade automatically do one of the following:

• close all of the trades initiated by this signal provider
• stop following this signal provider (in other words, stop initiating any new trades)
• stop following this trader and replace him with a similar trader or one with a better rank on ZuluTrade

The ZuluTrade social trading platform also lets you run a "Backtest" simulation with the settings that you intend to use. This means that you can see the performance of these parameters using historical data. Historical data is not indicative of future performance, but this tool is very useful for users who like to choose their own stop-loss or limit levels.

ZuluTrade's user interface also displays all trades that are closed, pending and open. Open trades can be closed directly from the ZuluTrade interface. You therefore don't have to go into the broker platform - if you close a trade in the ZuluTrade interface, it will automatically close the trade in your trading account.

Future articles will be more detailed regarding account settings and risk management. In the meantime, you can try ZuluTrade for free with a demo account.