How to Subscribe to a Signal

If you want to copy trading operations performed by a provider, you should subscribe to a signal. A weekly or monthly fee may be charged for the subscription.

A valid MQL5.community account is required for a signal subscription. Specify the account details in the platform settings, tab Community. If you do not have an account yet, please register.

How to Subscribe to a Signal 

Watch video: Subscribe to a trading signal From the video, you will learn how to subscribe to a signal and what parameters to specify. Find out, whether you need to copy the stop levels, what part of your deposit will take part in copying and what slippage to choose.

You can subscribe to a selected signal directly from the list or from the signal details page.

The details of the signal you are about to subscribe to are displayed in a separate window. Please carefully check them.

Basic signal data are displayed here:

• Signal — signal's name. When clicking on a name, you will move to a signal's description on MQL5.community.
• Author — signal provider's name. When clicking on it, you will move to the provider's MQL5.community profile.
• Broker — name of a broker server used by the provider.
• Growth — deposit growth on the provider's account from the moment of signal registration. The value is specified in percentage from the initial value.

• Date — subscription start and end date.

To transfer a payment, you can use your MQL5.community account funds. To do this, select MQL5 payment method.

Enter the password of your MQL5.community account to confirm your purchase. The specified amount is deducted from your account, and you can proceed to configure copying of trades. A successful subscription message, as well as subscription details and useful information are shown on the signal page.

If you do not have enough money on your MQL5.community account for subscribing to a signal, you may pay for it via one of the available payment systems directly from the platform. To maintain a clear and unified history of subscriptions, the required amount is first transferred to your MQL5.community account, from which a payment for the subscription is made.

The page of the corresponding payment system is opened after you select a payment method. Specify the necessary payment data: your login and password in the payment system or card information.

Mismatched trading conditions

Before subscribing to a signal the system checks some trading conditions on the accounts of the subscriber and provider:

• The minimal and maximal allowed volume for symbols — in case these settings do not match, there can be serious difference of the volume of the provider's trade operations and the volume of operations copied to the subscriber's account.
• Availability of symbols used by the provider on the subscriber's account — in case at least one symbol used by the provider is not available on the subscriber's account, copying of signals will be impossible.

If a mismatch is detected, the corresponding warning is displayed in the subscription window. It is recommended to subscribe to the signals with matching trading conditions.

After subscribing, move to the trading platform setting.

How to Configure the Trading Platform to Use Signals 

To configure the use of signals in the trading platform, open the settings window and move to the Signals tab.

Configure the following parameters:

• Agree to the terms of use of the Signals service — to start using the Signals service, agree to its rules of use. Read the rules carefully. If you agree, check the box next to the option. If you do not agree with the rules, do not use the Signals service.
• Enable realtime signal subscription — trading operations will be copied to your account only after this option is enabled. No operations will be copied to the account in case the option is disabled. The settings below will become editable only after enabling this option.
• Copy Stop Loss and Take Profit levels — Stop Loss and Take Profit placed at the provider's account will be also placed on your trading account if this option is enabled. These orders are executed at the broker's side. It means that they are executed regardless of whether the platform is running or not. Also, different brokers can provide different execution conditions (if subscriber and provider have different brokers).
  Therefore, copying of stop orders guarantees that a position will be closed upon reaching the specified profit and loss levels.

• Synchronize positions without confirmations — automatic synchronization without additional confirmation. When subscribing to a signal, trading states of the Subscriber's and Provider's accounts are synchronized. This can be a primary synchronization when activating the subscription or a re-synchronization during copying.
  If pending orders or non-signal positions (opened manually or by an Expert Advisor) are detected at the Subscriber's account during synchronization, the dialog offering to close the positions and remove the orders is displayed. If during the initial synchronization, a provider account has floating (unfixed) profit, a user will see a dialog window offering to wait for better conditions to start copying. In both cases, synchronization is not performed and copying of signals is stopped until the user makes the decision by clicking the appropriate dialog button.
  If the platform is working around the clock without constant external control (for example, runs on VPS), confirmation requests to perform synchronization are left unanswered and thus can prevent signals from being copied. When this option is enabled, synchronization is always performed automatically without the need for Subscriber's confirmation.

• If there are custom positions/orders, they are left on the account, while the system starts/proceeds copying the Provider's trades.
• If the Provider has a floating profit, the platform does not wait for better entry conditions and starts copying immediately.

• Use no more than [A] % — percentage value of your deposit that can be used for following provider's signals. For example, if your balance is 10,000 USD and 90% is specified here, then 9,000 USD will be used for following the signals. This affects the calculation of volumes of the deals performed when following the signals. The volume is calculated proportionally. See "Signal Subscribers" section for more information. It is strongly not recommended to change the deposit load if you already have positions opened according to a signal. This will lead to correction of volume of the open positions (volume increase or partial close at the current market price).
• Stop if equity is less than [B] — this parameter allows you to limit losses when using trading signals. If equity drops below a specified level, copying of trade signals is automatically terminated, all positions are closed. 0 means no limitations.
• Deviation/Slippage [C] spreads — this setting is similar to deviation set when orders are placed from the platform. This is the value of the permissible deviation of the executed order price from the price initially requested by the platform when copying a trading operation. This value is displayed as a part of the current spread on the symbol used in trading operation.
  The order is executed if the deviation is less or equal to the specified parameter.  If the deviation exceeds the specified value, the platform increases the acceptable deviation by 0.5. If the requote is received again, the accounts of the subscriber and provider become unsynchronized. Later the platform will retry to synchronize them.

Once all the parameters are set and subscription is allowed, your trading account starts synchronization with the Provider's one.

Initial synchronization of Provider's and Subscriber's accounts 

Synchronization is necessary to copy trades from a provider's account to a subscriber's one. The initial synchronization is the one performed when a subscriber's account has no signal-based open positions, for example, when activating a subscription.

A number of requirements should be met to carry out synchronization:

• Subscriber should not have open positions and active pending orders;
• total floating profit of all Provider's positions should be negative. This allows a Subscriber to enter the market at a price that is not worse than the Provider's one.

If at least one of these conditions is not met, the appropriate warning is displayed during synchronization attempt. Synchronization is not continued till the user makes the decision.

Carefully read the recommendations described in the dialog windows.

• If you want to automatically close all the open positions by the current market price and delete the pending orders, check "I am aware of the risk and I agree to synchronize positions and orders immediately". Then click the "Close positions and synchronize now" button. If you do not want the program to close the positions and delete the pending orders, click "I will check manually" or close the window.
• If you want to synchronize your account with the provider despite the positive floating profit, check "I am aware of the risk and I agree to synchronize trade positions immediately". If you want to postpone the synchronization and wait until the floating profit of the provider becomes negative, click "Wait for better market conditions". Until the floating profit of the provider becomes negative the platform will not synchronize the accounts and will not start copying trade operations.

Synchronization during copying 

After successful synchronization of positions, the platform can perform a re-synchronization. It is performed in case of network issues during copying to make sure that no trades from the Provider are missed.

If it turns out that some Provider's trades are absent on the Subscriber's account, the system copies them. Unlike the initial synchronization, the total floating profit of the Provider is not checked here. If the Subscriber started copying, they should follow the Provider's trading strategy to the maximum possible extent. It is impossible to copy some positions, while ignoring others.

In addition to the network issues, the reason for the absence of certain positions on the Subscriber's account may be activation of stop levels or closing positions manually:

• If the "Copy Stop Loss and Take Profit levels" option is enabled, the Subscriber copies Provider's operations together with stop levels. Different brokers may have different price flows, therefore stop levels on the Subscriber's account may be triggered earlier than on the Provider's one. If during re-synchronization, it turns out that a certain position on the Subscriber's account is already closed, while it is still open on the Provider's one, the service copies it again. To reduce the likelihood of such situations, it is recommended to use the account on the same server (broker) as the Provider's one for copying.
• If the Subscriber closes a copied position manually, it is opened again during re-synchronization. We strongly advise you against interfering with copying.

Copying Trading Operations and Volume Calculation 

After Subscriber's and Provider's accounts are successfully synchronized, copying of trading operations will start. This is done automatically.

Pending orders placed on Provider's account are not copied to Subscriber's account. Trade operations are copied when pending orders trigger: when a Buy Limit or Buy Stop order triggers, a buy signal is copied; when a Sell Limit or Sell Stop order triggers, a sell signal is copied.

The volume of trading operations performed on the Subscriber's account is based on the Subscriber's and Provider's available funds. The calculation is performed in several stages.

The volume is multiplied by the ratio of Subscriber's and Provider's balances considering deposit currency and allowable deposit load specified in the platform settings.

Assume that the Subscriber's balance comprises 8,000 EUR, the allowable load is - 50% and the Provider's balance is 10,000 USD. The current EURUSD rate is 1.20000. If the Provider performs a deal with the volume of 1 lot, the same deal is performed on the Subscriber's account with the volume of 0.48 lots. Subscriber's balance comprises 4,000 EUR or 4,800 USD considering allowable load. Therefore, the volume ration will comprise 4,800 / 10,000 = 0.48.

After the balances have been considered, Subscriber's and Provider's leverages are also taken into account. If Subscriber's leverage exceeds the one of the Signal Provider, it does not affect a volume of a copied deal. Otherwise, the deal volume is changed in direct ratio to the correlation of a Signal Provider's leverage with a Subscriber's one.

For example, if a Signal Provider having a leverage of 1:100 opens a deal of 1 lot, a Subscriber having a leverage of 1:500 will open a deal of 1 lot in case of 100% copying and a deposit matching by size and currency. A subscriber having a leverage of 1:10 will open a deal of 0.1 lots in similar conditions.

Volume calculations are displayed in the "Journal" tab of the platform. The sample entry is shown below:

Balance Operations on the Subscriber's Account during Copying 

The total amount of subscriber's funds is changed after a balance/credit operation is performed. If the percentage value of signals copying has decreased by more 1% afterwards (the volume of copied trades is calculated considering the ratio of the subscriber's and provider's balance), the subscriber's account is forcedly synchronized with the provider's one. This is done to correct the subscriber's current positions according to the new copying percentage value.

If the subscriber's funds have increased due to the balance or credit operation, no forced synchronization is performed.

Requoting 

The platform may receive a requote when copying a trade operation of a provider (the server returns new prices as a response to a trade request at the specified price).

If the deviation of the new price exceeds the "Deviation/Slippage [C] spread" value specified in the settings, the platform increases the acceptable deviation by 0.5 of the spread and makes another attempt to perform the trade operation. If the requote is received again, the accounts of the subscriber and provider become unsynchronized. Later the platform will retry to synchronize them.

Subscriptions Displayed in the Platform 

For convenience, trading accounts subscribed to a signal are marked with a special icon in the Navigator window:

When you point the mouse cursor over the name, the subscription's expiration date is displayed. The context menu contains commands for viewing the signal and unsubscribing from it. The latter one is displayed only if the appropriate trading account is currently active in the platform.

If the current trade account is subscribed to a signal, the corresponding icon is also displayed in the account state bar on the Trade tab:

Signal Copying Report 

Statistics on signal copying is displayed in "My Statistics" tab. It contains data on all signals the current trading account has ever been subscribed to.

All values in the list are only based on the trades copied to the trading account in accordance with the signal:

• Growth graph.
• Signal — signal name.

• Growth — deposit growth in percentage value calculated on the basis of trade history without considering deposits and withdrawals;

• Weeks — number of weeks, during which the signal was copied;

• Max DD — maximum balance drop from the local maximum in percentage value;
• PF — profit factor, ratio between gross profit and gross loss. One means that these parameters are equal.
• End date — signal subscription end date.

The list can be sorted by any of the above parameters. The first mouse click on the column name sorts the signals by the first parameter, while the second click — by the second parameter. To reset the sorting, click the upper line of the growth graph column.

Renew Subscription 

If a subscription expiration time approaches, and you want to continue using it, you should prolong it.

To manage subscription in the trading platform, open a page of any signal. "You already subscribed to [signal name]" message is displayed in the upper panel. The signal name is a link leading you to the signal's page.

Renew the subscription, click the button "Renew subscription". After that, the following window will appear:

Check the correctness of the data. If you agree with the subscription terms, pay for the subscription renewal just like you purchase a new subscription. If you subscribe to a free signal, specify your MQL5 account password.

Unsubscribing 

If you do not want to copy signals according to a subscription, it can be canceled.

To manage subscription in the trading platform, open a page of any signal. "You already subscribed to [signal name]" message is displayed in the upper panel. The signal name is a link leading you to the signal's page.

To unsubscribe from the signal, click the button "Unsubscribe". After that, the window opens where you need to confirm the cancellation of the subscription: