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Signal group

A paid or free chat where someone posts entries and exits for others to copy - which transfers the decisions without transferring any skill.

Signal services vary from honest to fraudulent, but they share a structural flaw. A copied entry arrives without the reasoning, the risk parameters, or the context, so the follower cannot manage the position when it does not behave as promised.

The economics deserve attention. A provider earning from subscriptions is paid for signals regardless of outcome, which is a different business from trading. Results are typically unaudited, losers vanish from the record, and slippage for a hundred followers entering at once is borne by the followers. Some groups exist mainly to provide exit-liquidity for the operator.

If you use one, treat it as a source of ideas subject to your own rules and size limits, log the results separately, and be honest after fifty trades about whether it added anything. See peer-review-group for the version that builds skill instead.

Related: copy-trading-psychology, exit-liquidity, shill, peer-review-group

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

Bid-ask spread in an order bookSell orders stacked above buy orders with a gap between the best of each.SELLERS (asks)50.0690050.051,40050.0460050.011,10050.002,30049.99800spread = 0.03BUYERS (bids)
The bid-ask spread. Buy orders sit below, sell orders above, and the gap between the best bid (50.01) and best ask (50.04) is the spread you pay to cross. Bar length shows the size resting at each price.

Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.