FXstat, the rapidly growing forex social network, has announced several new features, the most important of which is Tradebook - which similarly to Currensee and eToro's networks allows traders to follow other traders mirroring their trades. Tradency and Zulutrade are two large networks offering mirror trading and signal following in a more professional manner, Tradency through its proprietary web-based platform and Zulutrade through its website.
Trade-following is one of the fastest growing features in Forex trading today and I argued many times that this can and should become one of the future growth drivers for this maturing market. More professional money management will draw more mature, sophisticated and potentially larger crowd to this market which will soon stop being 'that thing for retail gamblers'.
Trade-following can be done in two principal manners - first one is to execute a fixed sized position and the second one is to execute a relative to your capital size position. Tradency and Zulutrade offer the former while Currensee the latter. FXstat is actually offering both.
I've gone through a web presentation of the new product with FXstat's CEO Sarmad Daneshmand and can tell you the following:
FXstat is doing this in a different style than others - it doesn't charge a markup on trades or receives an IB commission (although it is considering this option as well), rather it charges FXstat credits which, once loaded, allow traders to follow other traders until their credits run out. Spread markup is quite expensive at times but are easier to control than credits which require separate calculation (there's an alert that goes off when your credit fall below certain amount) and additional funding (directly to FXStat), so this model will need to prove itself.
FXstat can connect to any MT4 broker without receiving its permission and thus saves lots of integration time. FXstat also has its own stats publisher which is real-time - no longer you need to wait 5 minutes or so for the MT4 publisher to update your stats - FXstat's publisher does this almost immediately.
Just like Currensee, FXstat only allows verified account holders (3-4 months of live track record) to apply to become trade leaders. FXstat also tries to tackle the infamous problem of following traders - incompatibility between various brokers, trading styles, execution styles, differing spreads, etc - from a different angle: it filters out trade leaders who have less than 7 pips profit on average. This means that if you follow someone you have a nice error margin before you see that their trading style is incompatible with your own broker.
When asked what differentiates FXstat's new program from the likes of Currensee and eToro and stat publishing sites like myfxbook Sarmad noted the following:
- We believe that we show much detailed analysis of trading
- Users can choose to trade specific symbols and not just everything the leader trades
- We select and filter out signal providers
- There are no broker barriers - any MT4 broker account can be traded
- Not just a stats provider anymore
- We have our own publisher which is real-time unlike others
- We don't mark-up trades rather we charge low commission through trading credits
In general I'm happy with the new player town. More competition means better offering for trading, more options to choose from and of course over time prices coming down (mark-ups, commissions, etc). It's worth to note though that FXstat has rolled out this feature only now and there's a need for it to mature and get tested in real conditions before it becomes fully functional and accessible to all users.
