ZuluTrade Review Scores

Zulu is the worst among the automation platforms.

The fact that they earn by adding a pip or more to the client spread, or by having the client trading in their own brokerage, tells it all => there is a HUGE CONFLICT OF INTEREST between clients on one side and zulu and signal providers on the other side.

The more trades done, the more zulu and the provider earn, while the client's best interest would be few trades.
When a HUGE CONFLICT OF INTEREST like this is simply detected, run as fast as you can and never look back.

Not enough, they only allow providers and clients to trade with a predefined list of brokers, of course they favor the brokers that pay them the biggest commissions as introducing broker => another conflict of interest.

To avoid conflict of interest, which is the conditio-sine-qua-non for choosing an automation platform, the automation platform have to:

1) charge a fixed monthly fee to the client, or a percentage of the generated profits => no conflict of interest, neutral about trading styles.
2) let the signal provider and the client trade with a broker of their choice, or, at the very least, let choose among a good list of brokers, not only the most introducing broker friendly.

So, if you take a deep look at the better known automation platforms (zulutrade, collective2, tradency, zipsignals, rent a signal, currensee, ...) you'll discover that zulu is the only one who fails at both point 1) and point 2).

So do yourself a favor and leave zulu to those newbies who only need to lose the first account or two to get more serious.

deforex posted:
    Try zulu with an AAAFX account. COMPLETELY different results!

AAAFX is Zulu's own broking firm they own, thus with AAAFX your trades should execute. If you use zulutrade be sure to have aaafx execute the trades. They can more easily hedge the trades on currenex if there is enough followers for an account . With Alpari and others there is bound to be slippage and delays.

stevetrade posted:
    If they put this forward as the premise for the business then that would be fair enough, however this is what they claim to be:

'What is ZuluTrade ?

ZuluTrade bridged the gap between valuable information in money markets and trade execution, by converting the advice of professional and talented traders globally to an executed trade rapidly and automatically in your account (from supported brokers)

There was a time when trading was a headache. Not anymore! You don't have to study or monitor the market to make a good pick, because hundreds of industry well-known experts from all over the world are doing it for you. All you have to do is pick the experts you like, and ZuluTrade will quickly convert their advice into live trades in your trading account directly with the broker. And the best of all, it's completely FREE!*

ZuluTrade receives rebates from the brokers, for the trades generated and splits them with the experts that provide the advice. Check the performance results recommended by our experts here'

Now if it was to say

'ZuluTrade is a site full of dodgy chancers, sprinkled with a handful of decent traders. If you are prepared to spend ages sorting out the wheat from the chaff and have a degree in statistical analysis there is a small chance our highly flaky platform might convert some of those trades into one or two pip winners for you.'

That would be a fairer representation of the business model.

Take a signal provider and compare the draw-downs per trade to the gain. Pro-B5 is ranked at nr.2 or 3 but trades like a clown. He makes 9 winning trades in a row for 5 pips each only to wipe the entire gain with a 45 pip loss in the next trade.

From all the 'autotrading' platforms I tried on this site, this seemed the most serious

Try zulu with an AAAFX account. COMPLETELY different results!

MANSET AND VERIASEN OBJERVARSAN ZULU TRADE PLS DIT OK

WHOT IS ZULU TRADE

Im not a signal provider, so I dont know what problems a provider is facing. Im a live follower and my main concern is if what a provider does, will apply to my live account EXACTLY as in the provider's account. The quality of the providers is in fact a problem, but as I said, I think it can be dealt with by limiting the open positions to the provider and also adding a custom TP and SL (not in all cases though)
Now in the execution part:
There is slippage and slight signal execution, that is max 20seconds, with the broker I use. The biggest problem I have faced so far, is 1 trade was left open once, it was closed automatically by the system later though. I requested a refund for it and I got it. I believe this is cause because of the different broker the provider has from me.
Generally, I think that also brokers play a vital part in zulutrade. If you choose a bad broker, with high slippage and slow execution, you can loose everything really fast. You must admit though that zulutrade tries. The latest slippage chart is an interesting addition, as well as the calendar.
Again I dont know how zulu platform is for providers, I havent even connected my MT4 to zulu yet, though I will in the near future.

here's a discussion I had with them recently regarding a profitable provider from whom i was only getting a small proportion of the trades. What really pisses me off is that they knowingly show you stats that you can NOT achieve, not might not or hypothetical trading disclaimer stuff. They litterally know its impossible to achieve the stats for that provider that their showing you. If zulu doesn't broadcast the trades how do they justify showing them in the stats, their showing you trades they never had.

info: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
info: You are now chatting with 'Itab'
Itab: Hello. My name is Itab . How may I assist you?
you: hi I got transfered to you before from rose and it dropped out, im enquiring about 'PROVIDERS NAME'
Itab: Can you let me know what your question is and see if I can help?
you: essentially I want to know why there's profitable trade stats appearing that seem to not exist
you: the sell trades don't action on any live accounts (no L next to them). they havent actioned on either my live or demo accounts.
Itab: there is a maximum limit of 30 trades (including pending, and canceled pending orders) per day for each signal provider, therefore a signal provider with an MT4 can open as many trades as he wishes but only the first 30 trades, that have been sent with an interval of 15 sec between each one, will be broadcasted
you: well how do I change that on my account? because without changing it your showing me stats that can not in any way be replicted (false advertising)
Itab: I will be right with you.
you: okay
Itab: We sincerely apologise, but this is a general policy that applies to all providers without the possibility of any exceptions
you: okay bye

If you put the effort in to find the right traders then I'm sure in concept ZuluTrade could be profitable. However this does not remove the fact that they have technical glitches in there platform.

As I said in my initial post a friend of mine lost 16% of his account that should have been 1% trading my signals as ZuluTrade did not place a stop loss on his side of the trade. If he had not been occasionally checking his trades then he could easily have wiped.

No matter how much effort you put in to finding the right traders if the platform is flawed then it shouldn't be used. A mirror signal system has to be 100% watertight. This is people's money we are talking about here.

I must admit I do agree with you on the EA's, anything under $100 is trash.

I have been reading your comments about zulutrade and i wanted to post my comments too. If you take out the promotion zipsignals is trying to do by posting bad reviews about zulu (i have seen similar posts in other forums), for me the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Yes I use them too, but after a lot of testing. Its true that most signal providers are amateur traders, its very difficult to find a serious one. This is why i want to emphasize how important testing is.
I used the following method: tested about 30 signal providers, in different demos, all with custom stop values. It took me about 5 months to separate the good ones from the bad ones.
After the testing, I opened a small $1000 micro-lot account. Ive put only 3 of the providers I found good and only allowed them to trade 2 lots at the same time.
I dont say I got rich from zulu, if anyone claims this he has no idea about the forex market.
Also, about the EAs that are promoted here. Every EA that I have tested so far has been a catastrophe for me, so I have stopped believing that a simple 'robot' can make even the slightest pips and only cost like $50-60...

Everything I do relating to trading is always in the Stevetrade moniker. Fortunately nobody other than friends lost money with me due to ZuluTrade making mistakes and it was only 'play' money that they lost before we discovered it was a bad site.

stevetrade posted:
    I started out providing my signals on ZuluTrade. One of the things that is scary about them is that anybody can sign up and provide signals, nobody tests their systems first. So there are all sorts of terrible practices going on there. Providers just open up a massive demo account and then leave trades open until they turn into a profit. Applied to real accounts these trades end up wiping your account.

They are also not 100% reliable. I had a friend trading my signals who did not get some stop losses placed. One of my trades cost his account 16% of his balance when he was only risking 1% per trade.

Horrible, horrible, horrible. Stay well away from ZuluTrade

Steve,

Curious on your 'name' for Zulu. I probably lost money with you! Just kidding. I actually did decent but the server disconnects ended up costing me 30% on my account. No joke. It was 'a joke' and they tell you that they will refund you. THEY WON'T! They just lie lie lie...all the way to the bank! I did signals on there also, but just playing around and if anyone did sign up I would have stopped using it, but it was fun to see how accurate their servers are on my signals sent.

:)

stevetrade posted:
    I started out providing my signals on ZuluTrade. One of the things that is scary about them is that anybody can sign up and provide signals, nobody tests their systems first. So there are all sorts of terrible practices going on there. Providers just open up a massive demo account and then leave trades open until they turn into a profit. Applied to real accounts these trades end up wiping your account.

They are also not 100% reliable. I had a friend trading my signals who did not get some stop losses placed. One of my trades cost his account 16% of his balance when he was only risking 1% per trade.

Horrible, horrible, horrible. Stay well away from ZuluTrade

It is exactly what I think about this platform ... !! Nice review !

stevetrade posted:
    I started out providing my signals on ZuluTrade. One of the things that is scary about them is that anybody can sign up and provide signals, nobody tests their systems first. So there are all sorts of terrible practices going on there. Providers just open up a massive demo account and then leave trades open until they turn into a profit. Applied to real accounts these trades end up wiping your account.

They are also not 100% reliable. I had a friend trading my signals who did not get some stop losses placed. One of my trades cost his account 16% of his balance when he was only risking 1% per trade.

Horrible, horrible, horrible. Stay well away from ZuluTrade

You could not have said this any clearer or More Precise. The first time I was on their site, I figured out that ZULU is not a reliable source for Profitable Signals. I am sure you can Get a lot of SIGNALS. But reliable and profitable signals were Way to hard to filter out. I personally wouldn't trust this site.

''One of the things that is scary about them is that anybody can sign up and provide signals, nobody tests their systems first''

Very True.. Check Out Zipsignals... YOU HAVE TO BE APPROVED TO PROVIDE A RELIABLE AND PROFITABLE SIGNAL.

I believe that all the current Signal Providers are ALL MANUAL TRADERS, NO EA's... However, sadly, this will all change do to the fact that Zipsignals is Now being Promoted HERE.

Problem is that even after you (subscriber) set up risk properly most of the providers on there are down right useless.

E.G.: (unnamed 'swing trader' A)
Provider uses worst case of 500pip stops while your watching him, and seems to work okay. So you add him and set 500pip stop =1% of balance. Next thing you know the trades go against him and he moves it back to 6000pip+. Suddenly your heading for a 12% loss X multiple trades = Margin call / massive loss depending when you cut them off.

(unnamed 'Swing trader' B)
States how instead of using 1 or 2 positions he wants followers to use 20 much smaller positions so he can average in. Funny thing is when you watch him he opens all 20 positions at the same time/level (what happened to averaging?). Again just like 'A' he also uses 500pip stops and moves them back when they look like getting hit. Even if you set this guy up to be using .5% per trade (20X.5%=10% max risk across all trades) when he moves his stops 2000pips back to preserve his stats you end up with 40%+ risk. Crap ! Whats even funnier about this guy is everytime he clogs up an account he opens a new one, so he can always trade one while his subscribers on the others are stuck with floating losses.

And then scalpers have the problem of slippage or worse yet trades not closing or trader scalping using a 500+ stop :S. after slippage and commisions (assuming they never hit the stops / no trade closing errors) its still not worth having a scalper.

I agree that ignorance is one of the general reasons people fail on ZuluTrade. Greed is the other.

However it's easy enough to direct people to a web page without actually directing them to a web address. My description was passed and I used to tell people to search for my blog for more information. My blog has detailed set up details that allow users to set the risk exactly as they want it.

I think the biggest reason zulutrade gets a bad rap is that it is way to easy for the inexperienced to lose all of thier money quickly. I play both sides of the coin with zulutrader, as a provider and as an investor. It is frustating as a provider to see investers receiving your signals lose money on trades simply because they don't allow enough positions to be taken, or they set the lot sizes so big that they margin out. One of the biggest reason is the lack of information about how the systems trade. They used to allow the system providers to describe their systems, but I beleive the it was decided that was giving financial advice, which is a no-no.
I agree that there are some systems on zulu that are horendous with unrealistic stops and massive drawdowns. But there are some very good systems on there if you can weed through all of the crap. I personally only trade systems other than my own that are run with an EA, that have a reasonable drawdown, and after I dig through the tadeing history. Sure I make more money trading my own EA directly, but I have made 421 pips in the last 30 days on zulutrade.

Tested them out for 8 months and could never make money, providers have to churn out trades to make money, so they usually have tiny take profits and huge stops, and one day poof, the best provider wipes out his demo along with your live. He them moves on and does it again with a different name. Hunter was the most responsible one I found on there, but trades sparingly. It's a good setup if they could police it better and use some of the suggestions above.