IC Social – Copy Trading app from IC Markets

IC Social is a new app by broker IC Markets Global (Seychelles). Copy Trading is nothing new, but the popularity of this way of trading is constantly growing. Does IC Social have potential? How does the application look like and what solutions does it offer us? Personally, I will admit that I have already completed the first tests and ... I like it!

Copy Trading at IC Markets

First of all, we must take into account that the solution is fresh, so it may have its shortcomings, and the base of signal providers is constantly being created. However, considering that IC Markets is one of the most popular retail brokers in the world, you can be sure that over time there will be a whole lot of traders to choose from that we can copy. Not only that, we can also become signal providers ourselves, if we want.

How it's working

If you still don't know what social trading is and what it's all about, I refer you to this article. It is also worth looking through the entire section Social Trading at Forex Club – we tested and reviewed all popular solutions for you. Now let's move on to our title character - IC Social.

Available on Apple and Android

The app is for mobile devices only. At the moment there is no version available from the level of a web browser. IC Social can be downloaded from App Store for Apple devices or Google Play for android. After installing it, you need to register in the app itself (no matter if you already have an IC Markets profile). I'm not sure if you need to use the same email as for your IC Markets account, but for security reasons, I did. Right from the start, we have to decide whether we want to be signal providers or copycats.

You must have a Live MT4 account

To use the service, you must have a Live MT4 account - its type doesn't matter. It can be both account StandardAnd RAW, except that RAW is chosen by 99% of people due to more favorable commission terms (and Forex Club rebate 🙂). At the moment, accounts from platforms other than MT4 are not supported. Logging in is very simple - enter the data into your account, select the server and you're done.

After logging in

After logging in, we will be attacked by an experience form, consisting of more than 20 questions. Unfortunately - its completion is necessary to access all functions. Answer carefully.

Activity

This is the most interesting tab from the bottom menu. This is where copy traders come in. For a relatively new service, the list is already quite large and is getting longer every day. By default, the lists are empty, so you should go to the tab My Groups -> Join a Group. We can also create our own group and build our own portfolio.

Copying transactions

Of course, in order for the copying to take place, we must have capital in our account. Unfortunately, we can't do this on the demo so... either we go with the flow or we don't. Traders are grouped into several categories. We can see their results so far, as well as basic statistics.

To start copying, we select a trader, click Copy, select the method of copying the volume (trade size) and whether we want to duplicate the currently open positions as well (Copy existing trades).

We can also check the trader's currently open positions, his pending orders and closed trades. Thanks to this, we can analyze the delinquent's actions before starting to copy.

And that's it. We just have to wait for the results.

Commission and Fees

IC Markets opted for a solution that, in my opinion, is the fairest. The trader's remuneration may be only a percentage of the profits made. There is no (or at least I haven't found) an option to charge an "initial" or per volume copy fee, which is great. This does not force the trader to generate an excessive number of transactions to earn money, and does not cause the same fee to be charged multiple times if, for example, we want to stop copying only for a short time.

The downside is that the commission charged is relatively high and can be even 30-40%but there are traders who only take 10-20%. A lot? Little? Everyone has to judge individually, but it is certainly more fair than paying in advance for the very fact of copying.

Risk management

Now let's go to the bookmark Account -> Max drawdown. This is where the limits for risk management are located. First of all, it's great that the creators came up with it, because it's not so obvious for all social trading platforms. We can define the levels of capital drawdown in percentages at which the following things will happen:

• warning level - we will get a warning about reaching this level;
• Soft stop level – copying will be suspended;
• Hard stop level – copying will be suspended and all open positions will be closed.
• current level – the level of the current slide, which we can also reset at any time.

IC Social: Additional features

An additional option is classic trading. "But how?" – you will ask. After all, IC Markets has a mobile MT4 app… That's right. If you have it installed on your phone, that's fine. But I remind you that MetaQuotes platforms are banned from the App Store from September 2022. and there is nothing to indicate that they are "unbanned". In short: traders who did not have MetaTrader installed on their phone in September 2022 will not do so now. Due to this fact, more and more brokers are creating their own trading applications. And this is how IC Social became such a mini-harvester 2 in 1.

Unfortunately, the functions for analysis and trading are so poor that it is better to remain silent, and to prove it, see the screenshot from the application on the right. But well, it's better than nothing.

The future of apps

We can certainly expect big updates in the coming months, such as the development of functionalities related to trading itself, but we can also read that chat options will be introduced so that traders can communicate with each other. In just the last 4 days, 18 signal providers have joined the application, so you can expect that over time we will have a really powerful base of traders to choose from.