Copy Trading
Trade once on one account. Every other account you own follows — with the size you choose, and with guards that refuse to do the wrong thing when accounts don't match.
What this is — and isn't
✓ What it does
Mirrors your own trades across your own broker accounts. You nominate one account as the leader, trade on it normally, and your other accounts follow automatically.
✗ What it doesn't do
It is not a marketplace where you subscribe to a stranger's calls. You cannot follow another trader here. If that's what you're shopping for, this isn't the product.
It's built for people running more than one account: your own plus a family member's, an HUF, a partner's account, or the same strategy split across brokers for margin headroom or order rate limits. You place the trade once; every account moves together.
Setting it up
Connect your broker accounts, then open the Copier tab in the Terminal:
- Pick a leader account — the one you actually trade on.
- Tick the accounts that should follow it.
- Give each follower a multiplier — a whole number, minimum 1.
A follower is ×1, ×2, ×3 — or switched off. There is no ×0.5 and no ×0.
Zero is refused deliberately. It doesn't mean "don't copy" — mathematically it means "hold nothing", which would tell the system to close everything on that account. To stop copying an account, untick it.
Multipliers scale in lots, not units. A ×2 follower on a 1-lot NIFTY trade gets exactly 2 lots — never an odd quantity the exchange rejects for not being a lot multiple.
When you open a trade
Every enabled follower gets the same trade, scaled by its multiplier. Accounts fire in parallel, each through its own queue and its own rate limit — ten followers don't take ten times as long as one.
It works from everywhere you can trade: the order ticket, basket execution, option-chain quick-trade, the chart Buy/Sell buttons, the straddle table and Strategy Builder.
If your order is larger than the exchange freeze limit, it's split into legal chunks automatically, per account. Nothing to configure.
When you close a trade
Followers close too — but only down to what they actually hold.
| Follower's position | What happens |
|---|---|
| Same size as the leader | Closes fully |
| Smaller than the leader | Closes only what they have |
| Nothing at all | Skipped, with the reason shown |
| Can't be read right now | Skipped — never assumed to be empty |
It doesn't matter how you close: the square-off button, a plain sell from the order ticket, or a strategy exit. If the order reduces your leader position, it's treated as an exit.
The reverse-position problem
This is the single most important thing to understand about any copy-trading system, and the place most of them get it wrong.
Suppose a follower account joined after you were already positioned. They never had the trade. When you close, a naive system copies the instruction — "sell 2 lots" — and because there's nothing to sell, it opens a brand new short on an account that was flat.
An accidental reverse position isn't a small error. You wanted to be flat and you're now short — with the opposite exposure, fresh margin blocked, and nobody watching. On options, a surprise short has uncapped risk.
Automatic exits — stop-loss and rules
Copying isn't only for orders you click. When the platform exits a position for you, followers are exited too:
- Stop-loss and target hits
- Max-loss square-offs
- Adjustment-rule exits and rolls
- Trigger fires and re-entries
- Strategy leg exits
All of it goes through the same guard — capped to what each follower holds, never opening a reverse.
The copying happens after your leader order is placed. Nothing about your followers — a slow account, an unreachable broker — can delay your own stop-loss by even a moment.
When an order doesn't fill
An order is priced against the market as it was when the order was sent. In a fast move, that price is already history by the time it reaches the exchange, and the order can sit there unfilled.
Turn on Limit-order chase in Default Order Attributes and the platform re-prices resting orders toward the current market, stepping more aggressively each attempt — on the leader and every follower. It runs on our servers, so it keeps working after you close the browser.
For an automatic stop, the chase runs whether or not you switch the setting on, and it's allowed to step much further. An unfilled stop-loss isn't a preference anyone holds.
And if the position turns out to be already closed, the resting order is cancelled rather than chased — otherwise it would eventually fill and open a reverse.
Order protection
No plain market order ever leaves the platform. Every order becomes a marketable limit priced a buffer through the touch — it fills like a market order, but caps freak-fill slippage.
Automatic stop-losses use separate, wider buffers, and they're deliberately asymmetric:
| Closing | Buffer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A long (selling out) | Wide | A miss is bad, but the downside is bounded — the premium can only fall to zero. |
| A short (buying back) | Widest | A short option's premium can multiply in seconds. A tight cap means no fill on the one leg with uncapped risk. |
You can tune both in Default Order Attributes. They're never applied tighter than your ordinary exit buffer.
Position sync — the safety net
Some drift can never be caught by copying orders, because no order exists to copy:
- Your broker's MIS auto square-off at 15:20
- An RMS cutoff or margin call
- You exited by hand in the broker's own app
- A follower's leg was rejected for margin
- A follower was added mid-session
None of those pass through the platform. The only way to detect them is to compare state — which is what Check follower positions does. It reads every account and shows you exactly what differs:
| Instrument | Leader | Target | Follower | Action | Order | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NIFTY 24000 CE | −65 | −65 | 0 | open | SELL 65 | missing — leader holds −65, follower holds none |
| BANKNIFTY 52000 PE | 1225 | 1225 | 490 | add | BUY 735 | short by 735 — topping up to the 1225 target |
| CRUDEOILM 7600 CE | 0 | 0 | −10 | close | BUY 10 | leader no longer holds this — closing the follower's position |
You can sync one account or all of them. Positions are re-read at the moment you confirm, so you never execute against a stale snapshot. Closing orders go out before opening ones, so freed margin is available and nothing sits reversed in between.
If a follower is long where the leader is short, the fix is two orders — close to flat, then open the other way — never one double-sized order straight through zero.
The status chips
Every account carries a live badge in the Copier tab, so you can see drift without going looking for it:
| Chip | Meaning |
|---|---|
| LEADER | The account everything is measured against. |
| IN SYNC | Read successfully and matching. Hover to see how many instruments were checked. |
| 3 OUT OF SYNC | Differs from the leader. Click it to review the diff. |
| NOT CHECKED | Couldn't be read, or isn't eligible. Hover for the reason. |
An account we failed to read has zero known differences — but that is not the same as matching. It shows NOT CHECKED, never IN SYNC.
Limits & requirements
| Limit | Detail |
|---|---|
| One leader | A single leader account per user. No multi-leader routing. |
| Your accounts only | Not social or marketplace copy trading. |
| Whole-number multipliers | ×1 and up. No fractional sizing. |
| Demo copying | Free. Run the whole thing on paper accounts before risking money. |
| Real-account copying | Requires the Copy Trading add-on, plus QuikTrade for real execution. |
| Per-account enable | Each broker account must be individually enabled for trading. One that isn't is skipped and told to you. |
| Passive limit exits | If your exit default is a passive limit, sync exits may rest unfilled. The app says so on the row rather than overriding your setting. |
The rule underneath all of it
Every risky decision fails closed. Account unreadable → skip. No matching position → skip. Can't confirm → skip, and tell you why.
The one deliberate exception: if we can't read your leader's book we treat the order as an opening trade, because refusing to classify must never block a legitimate trade you asked for. The per-account cap still catches it downstream.
Copy trading lives in the QuikTrade Terminal → Copier tab. See also the Terminal guide.
FNOTrader publishes analysis, execution and automation software. This page is educational and is not investment advice, a buy/sell recommendation or a research report. Sukrisa Technologies LLP is not a SEBI-registered investment adviser or research analyst. Trading in derivatives involves substantial risk of loss.
FNOTrader — Copy Trading