Copy trading, explained for a beginner in the Philippines.

Who this guide is for

Copy Trade Notes PH is written for someone in the Philippines who has met the words copy trading and wants to know what they cover before anything else. It is a reading desk: it reads public pages, writes down what they say, and puts the date on every reading. The main source is cTrader Copy, the copy-trading service inside the cTrader platform: its front page, its list of brokers, three symbol pages and four help pages. The latest reading was 6 November 2026.

The site is not a broker and does not hold money. It does not say that a reader should or should not copy anyone. Where a page was silent or closed, it says so in place of guessing.

Copy trading in four sentences

A trader, the strategy provider, trades on their own account. You allocate money to that strategy, and the platform repeats the provider's trades on a separate account of yours, sized by the ratio of your money to theirs. You can stop at any time. The provider is paid by fees that the platform takes from your account. The rest of this guide is detail on those four sentences.

What does not move

The decision about which trades are made moves to the provider. The result does not move. The copied trades run on an account made from your own funds, so every gain and every loss of a copied trade lands there. The pages describe no way of passing a loss to the provider or the platform, and cTrader's front page says that copy trading involves significant risk and may not be suitable for all users.

How a copy is sized

The help page gives the rule: your equity divided by the provider's equity, multiplied by the provider's volume. In its own example a provider with USD 4,000 opens 4 lots and an investor with USD 1,000 gets 1 lot. With invented numbers of this site's own, USD 10,000 against USD 500 turns a provider's 2.0 lots into 0.10. The size is recalculated whenever money moves on either account.

A practice account

The help pages say demo accounts hold virtual funds and can copy only free strategies, and only if the provider allows it. The pages describe no way for a demo account to show the fees of a live strategy. Whether FxPro's demo account can follow a strategy at all is not stated on any page this site read, and it is a question for the broker.

Pesos and dollars

Of the 24 copy entries on cTrader's list, 24 print the US dollar as a base currency and 0 prints the Philippine peso. For FxPro the list printed EUR, USD, GBP, CHF, JPY, PLN, AUD, ZAR, NGN, VND, THB, MYR, IDR, which includes baht, dong, ringgit and rupiah and no peso. Money going in is converted once and money going out once, each with a rate and perhaps a charge. This site read no rate, no charge and no rule on sending money, and shows one example on invented numbers.

The SEC page this site could not read

On 6 November 2026 this site requested the advisories page of the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Philippines and two advisory PDF files. Every request answered HTTP 403, which is a refusal to serve the page to this server. So no SEC page was read, no advisory is described here and no position of the Commission is stated. The reader is sent to the Commission's own advisories page and its register of registered companies.

What the broker list prints about regulators

The page of brokers held 53 entries, 24 of them with the copy flag the page prints as "Copy available". Those 24 printed 40 regulator labels, and 0 of them name the Philippines. 10 entries printed none. A label is a pointer to a register this site did not read, not a finding about a firm.

The one broker this site links to

FxPro's entry on the list carried a copy flag, a maximum leverage of 1:30, a minimum deposit of USD 100, and the regulators FCA UK; SCB - SIA Bahamas. FxPro quotes its instruments as contracts for difference and offers no shares of any exchange through this route: cTrader Copy forbids copying trades on symbols that represent stocks and shares. Whether its copy service is open to a resident of the Philippines is a question for FxPro.

What the provider charges

Three fees, each with a printed cap: a performance fee of at most 40% of net profit above the high-water mark, a management fee of at most 10% of equity a year, and a volume fee of at most USD 10 per million copied. They are charged on the 1st of each month, when you stop, when you remove funds and when the provider stops the strategy. From 4 July 2026 the platform takes 30% of the provider's fees, which the help page says adds nothing for investors.

What no page prices

The broker's spread, its commission on copied trades, the cost of positions held overnight and the conversion between currencies have no figure on the pages this site read. They are real costs of a leveraged position and of funding. A beginner who adds up only the fees on the Start copying button has the provider's layer and none of the others.

A month of fees on invented numbers

For USD 500 allocated, a performance fee of 15%, a management fee of 2% and a volume fee of USD 3 per million, a month in which the strategy makes USD 60 of net profit gives USD 9.00, USD 0.82 and USD 0.66, or USD 10.48 together. The figures are made up for easy arithmetic and say nothing about any strategy.

The 20 public cards, counted

The cards on cTrader's gold, bitcoin and euro pages are the same 20. Their ages run from 49 days to 1,369, and 12 are under a year old. Minimums run from USD 100 to USD 50,000. 15 list gold among their symbols, and 19 different symbols appear in all. This site shows these counts and no provider's name, because the counts are what the pages let it say without ranking anybody.

Printed returns beside short curves

The printed returns run from -17% to 113,998%; 8 are 1,000% or more and 2 are negative. Beside each return a 29-day curve is drawn, from 8 October 2026 to 5 November 2026: 5 of the 20 ended below zero. The cards do not state the period of the printed return, which is why this site never calls it a result for a reader.

What cTrader's own pages say about availability

The front page of cTrader Copy says that availability of live copy trading may vary by broker, jurisdiction and applicable regulatory requirements, and that each broker is solely responsible for deciding whether copy trading may be offered to its clients. The broker page adds: "cTrader Copy availability depends on local regulations and your broker. Please check with your selected broker before opening an account." None of the pages says which countries are served.

What the strategy list leaves out

The help page says: "The strategy list only includes strategies whose providers are currently trading." A strategy that has stopped is therefore not on the list, and a count of the cards cannot show how many strategies began and ended. Every count here describes the cards shown on the day they were read.

Questions to put to a broker before depositing

Which company holds the account, under its exact legal name, and which regulator's register shows it? Is the copy service open to a resident of the Philippines? Is the account a hedging account, which copying requires? Can a demo account follow a strategy? In which currencies can the account be held, how does money arrive from a Philippine bank or e-wallet, and who charges for the conversion? What is the account's leverage compared with the provider's? What happens to the money if the provider stops the strategy? The last has an answer in the help pages: all investors stop copying, open positions are closed and unrealised fees are charged.

A short glossary

Provider: the trader whose positions are copied. Investor or follower: the account that repeats them. Equity: the balance with open profit and loss included. High-water mark: the highest value reached, above which a performance fee applies. Margin: the part of the account held against an open leveraged position. Stop out: the broker closing positions because the margin is no longer enough. Contract for difference: an agreement on a price change, not ownership of the thing priced.

When the readings were taken

The cTrader pages were saved on 6 November 2026 within a few minutes of each other, one request at a time, and the SEC's pages were requested the same day. A later reading may differ: brokers are added to the list, cards change, a help page is revised and a refused page may open. The date beside each figure is what makes it checkable, and a figure without its reading date is not printed here.

How a figure on this site is checked

The saved pages are counted by one script and recounted by a second one that reads the files by another route; a disagreement is reported as an error. Defects planted on purpose in five places were each caught. That checks the copying of figures. It does not check that the platform's pages are right, and it does not check any register, because none could be read.