Greetings everyone. Some of you may remember my adventures with FXDD Auto a while back. Well it’s kid of funny how things work out but it seems I’ve found another similar tracker of Forex signal providers. This one goes by the odd name of ZuluTrade. I must thank “JOhn” form the NO BS Forum for bringing this website to my attention. Now let’s get into the meat of the review.
So what is ZuluTrade?
Well, put simply ZuluTrade is website that allows you to automatically (handled by trade robots) execute trade signals offered by various “Forex signal providers”, and best of all, you get this at no cost to you (that means “For Free” for those of you who love cliches). ZuluTrade acts sort of like a bridge between you and the Forex signal providers. You not only get detailed trade signal history data but a spiffy graph to dazzle your eyeballs too. My my, I bet some of you will start having wet dreams when you see those equity curves. Ok, joking aside, let the review continue.
So you’re telling me this service is completely free?
Do I hear an echo? Seriously, yes! ZuluTrade get compensated for their services through the spread between the bid/ask prices. The revenues are then shared with the signal providers who generate the trade signals.
Who is placing the trades on my account? Do the experts know about my account?
None of the experts that recommend trades will ever know your account’s existence. ZuluTrade receives their recommendations, and checks the experts you have subscribed with in your account profile, and decides whether or not to autotrade their advice in your live account using a secure direct connection with the broker’s backend. Zulutrade’s patented engine places trades automatically with no human intervention. ZuluTrade service is server based, in other words you don’t even need to have your computer on.
Are the results hypothetical? There are a lot of websites that claim all kinds of results.
Every signal received by ZuluTrade is executed on at least one live / demo broker account. The results contain final spread, swap rates, and profit or loss from current open positions, hence all possible costs by the broker. The spread is the standard spread advertised by the broker you’re trading with. Hence our performance always reflects real market conditions. Due to the volatility of the markets, sometimes results may vary between accounts. All signals and trades executed on a demo account are considered to be hypothetical
What is the minimum deposit to open a new account?
You can open up either a standard account or a mini account. For a standard account is $20,000+ USD and for a mini account is $1,000+ USD. You know what, make that $2500 USD for a mini account. I made the grave mistake of opening up a sub $1000 account with FXDD Auto and I got what I deserved, which was to have my account wiped out during account drawdowns. Anyways, personal bitterness aside, those of you who don’t know the difference between a standard or a mini account permit me to educate you my dear benighted friend. With a standard-account each lot you trade is worth $100,000, while with a min-account each lot is worth $10,000. A lot by the way is standard unit size of a transaction. It might help to think of a lot as sort of like a “share”. But that might be a bit misleading as you’re now owning a piece of a company but rather a big pile of money. I think that should do it for now as I don’t want to get into the basics of forex here. I’m simply assuming that you already graduated from Forex kindergarten and are ready to “play with the big boys”.
Who picks the signal providers?
Nobody. Any individual can become a ZuluTrade signal provider. It is not possible on ZuluTrade to misrepresent the performance of the signals generated. If ZuluTrade shows a profit or loss, it is accurate, because details are confirmed by the dealing broker’s statements. For each pip stated in the performance section, there is a trade registered in the broker’s backoffice. The results are not hypothetical, but actual.
I like to think of ZuluTrade as being a Forex freelance website.
So what kind of performance should I expect?
Well, of course that varies based on what signal provider you choose, but just taking a quick look at the “top dog” I can see that from the beginning of this year till today this signal provider managed to churn out a profit of $141,218.50, closing 17,520 pips with a total of 925 trades. The average pip per trade was 18.94 so you can tell this signal provider uses some sort of intra-day trading style. So far there are currently 267 subscribers to this signal provider. Good for them. I bet they’re making people a lot of money and in turns making quite a nice chunk of change for themselves too.
OK buddy, what’s the catch?!
There isn’t any. Well, I guess the only “catch” is that you have to open a forex brokerage account with ZuluTrade as your IB (Introducing Broker). Currently you can choose between FXCM and Man Financial. Both are reputable Forex brokers in my opinion. To be honest, I don’t know too much about Man Financial so I’m going to go with FXCM as I already have an account with them.
Ok, you’ve convinced me, where do I sign?
First of all, I don’t want to be the one doing the convincing. Instead you should investigate this opportunity in detail and after you’ve done your research, then and only then give the service a try.
In conclusion I think ZuluTrade is a good alternative to the FXDD Auto platform. It certaintly is a bit more open in the sense that anyone who fancies himself a hot-shot forex trader can sign-up to become a signal provider on ZuluTrade. One thing is for sure when I open up and account with FXCM to try ZuluTrade’s signal providers I will certainly not repeat the mistake I made with FXDD Auto where I opened a mini-account with just $500. I would STRONGLY advise you to not play around and at least make the account size $2000 for a mini account, and DO NOT OVERLOAD your account with too many signal providers. I’m sure you folks are smart enough to figure out the proper leveraging needed.
On that note I conclude my review. I hope this makes you a lot of money and I wish you the best. If you have any questions about ZuluTrade or you just want to harass me with questions like “what’s a pip?” please feel free to do so by firing off an e-mail (as a test of your skill I’ll leave it up to you to find my e-mail in the first place)
You can reach ZuluTrade’s website at:
Hi Alan,
Man Financial are one of the largest (maybe the largest) forex and futures brokers in the world. They also so Spread BEtteing and have a big presence in London. The broker I used to trade with here in the UK, GNI, were taken over by them a few years back. They are a plc and their shares are quoted on the London Stock Exchange.
Regards,
Pete
Sorry for the typo’s – I should be wearing my other glasses really 🙂
lol..it’s okay Pete. Thanks for the info on Man Financial. Would you recommend Man Financial?
It is April 2009, and I am compelled to relay the scam that is ZuluTrade. I have been a client/customer of ZuluTrade for 4 months now. First time they missed an exit signal from the signal provider I had selected, it cost me 40pips (and I say only 40 pips because by the grace of god, I caught it just in time).
Second time couple months later ZuluTrade missed the exit signal of my selected signal provider, cost me 540pips. Neither ZuluTrade nor FXCM would own up to their mistake. Never again will I trade with either of them. Dave Sidwell
Umm, I’m not so sure ZuluTrade is responsible for missed execution. This sounds more like a problem with the broker – in your case FXCM. Maybe you should try a different broker?
I agree. I think that the problem is not in ZuluTrade. But I´m not sure that change of your broker will solve it. Markets are very quick. Although everything is automated there are of course some delays. Your signal provider changes for example the stoploss which is 10 pips from market price. Although your broker gets the information within few second the market price could change and will be only 9 pips from requested stopoloss. If your broker has limit for changes 10 pips from market price the request will not be executed. Your SL will be unchanged … Therefore I always try the signal provider on demo and then on live account with small position (0.01 – micro lot). If there is lot of such discrepancies I do not follow such provider. For more information see: http://www.czech-trader.cz/en/