6 lessons I have learned in my first year of trading

When I first started trading CFDs on eToro, I was highly motivated but had no experience at all. No wonder I had to learn a few lessons in my first year of trading. I thought I was doing the right thing, when I read tons of blogs, websites and books about CFDs, trading, chart analysis, fundamental analysis, indicators, strategies and even about myself. Despite the many rules and guidelines I have read, I needed to learn some lessons by doing it the wrong way first. After learning more and more trading rules I at least managed to finish my first year of trading with a small profit. So far, those have been my most important lessons learned:

Portfolio Review 01.05.2017

After the main portion of my eToro credits have been withdrawn from my eToro account, I took a break from ManualTrading to find new trading approaches. A few weeks ago I resumed my activities and would like to share my new strategy with you in this portfolio review. As always, the plain numbers first:

CopyTrading: -19,9% (last portfolio review: -21,2%)
ManualTrading: -11,0% (last portfolio review: -11,7%)
Overall: -15,7% (last portfolio review: -17,0%)



Remark: The graph above shows the profits relative to the money deposited on my eToro account. It doesn't consider remaining credits as well as compensation that I receive as popular investor on eToro.

5 rules for successful CopyTrading on eToro

When I first started CopyTrading on eToro I ran into a couple of pitfalls. From my personal lessons learned I derived 5 rules for successful CopyTrading on eToro in order to help you avoid the mistakes I made in the past and enjoy the benefits of social trading.

Portfolio Review and adjustments 18.03.2017

When I first deposited money on my account, I received credits from eToro. After six months they have now been deducted which forced me to rearrange my portfolio. Here is my current portfolio status:

CopyTrading: -15,14%
ManualTrading: -8,11%
Overall: -12,01%

Portfolio Review 18.02.2017

I have been trading on eToro for nearly six months now, so time to share another portfolio review. Unfortunately I am still not profitable overall, but I have the feeling to make some progress on my manual trading:

CopyTrading: -10,92%
ManualTrading: -7,02%
Overall: -9,30%

Portfolio Review 14.01.2017

I didn't intend to publish another portfolio review just two weeks after the last one. But while reviewing my portfolio for myself I realized, that for the first time since I started trading, my ManualTrading portfolio has performed better (or less bad) than my CopyTrading portfolio:

CopyTrading: -8,03%
ManualTrading: -3,71%
Overall: -5,94%

Getting out of sync @CopyTrading pt. 2 - 13.01.2017

A few weeks ago I realized for the first time that I was not properly synchronized with the traders in my CopyTrading portfolio (click here to read the corresponding post). With what I have learned from this analysis I carefully chose a new line up of traders for my portfolio (click here to read about the rearranging). After five weeks of copying this new line up, I checked whether my portfolio is properly synchronized - unfortunately it is not.

Portfolio Review 01.01.2017

The year 2016 has come to an end, so it was time for a portfolio review. December has been a rough month for both CopyTrading and ManualTrading with quite some losses. Therefore the following numbers are somewhat disappointing:

CopyTrading: -7,74%
ManualTrading: -9,48%
Overall: -8,58%

The following graph shows the course of my equity:

Rearranging my CopyTrading portfolio cw50/16

After 14 weeks of copying other traders the overall performance of my CopyTrading portfolio is rather low (+0,94%). I think it was time to rearrange my portfolio and choose some new traders. In this post I describe how I decided.

Getting out of sync @CopyTrading

When I reviewed my CopyTrading portfolio a few weeks ago I realized, that the performance of my copied traders differ a lot (see chart below). Some are performing great, with a profit >10%. Others are losing up to 20% of my investment. As a result the overall profit of my CopyTrading portfolio is below 1%. So it was about time to think about rearranging my portfolio. First I started analyzing the charts of some traders and realized, that I am not properly synchronized with them. In this post I discuss two examples and explain what I believe are the reasons.

Portfolio Review 12.11.2016

It has been six weeks since my last portfolio review and those weeks were exciting. We have seen quite some volatitly, mainly due to the elections of the 45th U.S. president. There was a lot of uncertainty and also some fear of what might happen. Finally Trump is the one to move into the white house and the markets didn't collapse as some traders might have expected. In addition to those interesting market surroundings, eToro - today the only platform I am trading on - introduced a new investment product: The CopyFunds (check eToro's website for more information). So it was about time to review my portfolio, so here we go:

CopyTrading: +2,54%
ManualTrading: -13,54%
Overall: -5,22%

Portfolio Review 01.10.2016

It is the end of a week, end of a month and end of a quarter - good time for a new portfolio review. There had been a lot of ups and downs with a positive result:

CopyTrading: +0,25% (total: +0,85%)
ManualTrading: +0,62% (total: -3,79%)

Porfolio review 17.09.2016

This week was rather bad for my portfolio. I already posted my big loss with copper here. In addition my CopyTrading portfolio wasn't going well - difficult times for all traders. My overall balance for the last trading week:

CopyTrading: -0,85% (total -0,03%)
ManualTrading:  -6,63% (total -7,56%)

Portfolio review 10.09.2016

Today I reviewed my portfolio to check on my overall performance so far. I figured that I had 25.9% of my equity invested in CopyTrading, 39,6% in open trades and 34,5% currently not invested. I also checked on my gains so far:

CopyTrading:    +1,64%
ManualTrading: -0,99%

Looks like I am better in picking people for CopyTrading than to trade on my own. An additional motivation to continue working on my trading strategy (check what happened so far here). It is also obvious that I need to keep a higher ratio of my equity invested, for a better overall performance. Based on the figures I decided to work on my CopyTrading portfolio.

Finding Traders to copy pt.1

Finding the first traders to copy was quite easy. @TradeBetter published a list of the 25 most copied traders including the profits in the months before. From this list I picked the 10 traders with the best profits and copied them. I picked the following: