Hi, I’ m Bod, a handy man who loves football and enjoys a pint over a sumptuous pie. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to now be able to have more money and more time available to enjoy all the things I fancy.
Want to know how I did it?
My story is a bit long, but please bear with me and read through it all, since it wasn’t just pure luck that led me to financial freedom, but sharing my experience with everyone interested is my way of saying “thank you” to the “powers” or “forces” that have allowed my life to improve hugely.
Last summer I was on holiday with my wife on the sun-kissed island of Cyprus and decided to tempt my luck by buying an instant lottery scratch card on the way back to the hotel from the beach. To my delight I scratch the card and found out I had just won €5,000, which is a little more than £3,500. On the same evening I was discussing how lucky I was to get that sort of cash by just paying €1 with an expat friend who has retired to Cyprus.
He was happy that I was generous enough to pay for all rounds that night and made a big fuss about how I should consider putting this sum of money work for me and try and get it to generate some extra income. After all, he said, you have nothing to lose as this morning you didn’t actually have this money, anyway. The way he was talking about “passive income” opportunities got me intrigued and excited, but I stopped him when he started going on about online trading and investments, since I hadn’t the faintest clue about markets and the financial world and how it all works.
When I returned back home, a week later, I got an email from Stan, my expat friend, who said that he had stumbled across this company, eToro, that was Cyprus –based and regulated by the pertinent Cyprus authorities. His point was that unlike other firms that were just brokers, this company also offered a copy trading feature. As Stan explained, if I signed up, I could make money through trading because I did not need to actually trade myself or learn anything about trading per se. As he put it, even if I was convinced I could not trade, he was certain that I, like anyone else, could easily just copy other traders.
I slept on the idea for a few days and decided that I would give it a shot, since I was never a coward and I did want to try out if I could get some piece of the action myself, provided that I did not need to actually learn all the technicals and details of trading online, since I then lacked the necessary understanding, the experience, the time and the stamina to even attempt this.
I had £2,000 left from the winnings of the scratch card and decided that I could afford to risk to lose that sum, since as Stan had said that was money that came to me out of the blue. So, I decided to open an account with eToro and only stay in it while that original sum lasted.
I read a bit about how copy trading works and was excited and pleased to see that the only thing I really needed to do was to identify some successful traders, since all the rest was done automatically and I would be able to copy their trades and profit from their experience, skills and gains without worrying about market news, price fluctuations and all sorts of technical indicators, stats, graphs and sophisticated jargon.
Once I opened my account and was trying to figure out who to follow and copy from the millions of expert traders available on e-Toro, I wrote an email to Stan to let him know I had decided to follow his suggestion and try out copy trading. I was shocked to get his reply that he had tried already and lost a couple of thousand in a matter of days. He said that he regretted going in head over heels and that with the benefit of hindsight he would have been much more careful when choosing the traders to copy and more conservative with the risks he took. As a last piece of advice he said I should not start trading with real money, before I actually tested it all out, including the performance of my chosen “gurus” through a demo account, were all losses would be virtual and not real.
My friend’s bad news did not put me off, actually it made me more determined to succeed and be able to show off that I could do better than him. It suddenly became a matter of pride, so I set off to track down those traders that would help me make money by placing the right trades.
The process is very transparent and easy to understand, but I must admit that the selection of traders did take me quite a bit of time and some trial and error, most errors luckily occurring on the demo account, so the losses weren’t real. Several months down the line I am now proud and happy to say that my initial investment has paid off wonders. I have been making a steady extra income each month and have more time in my hands and more cash to spend on having a good time.
I even managed to pay for Stan’s ticket for a trip back home during the Christmas holiday, which he very much appreciated and it was my way of saying thank you, because I would have never ventured the trip into copy trading if it weren’t for him. I also shared with him some tips on selecting the right traders as this is really the crucial part in copy trading. If you are also interested to try it out remember to do your research well and don’t hesitate to actually talk to the traders you are considering to follow as direct communication can make you much wiser about why they trade the way they do.
Another tip is that you should always monitor their performance on a regular basis and adjust your stop losses or close trades on time if things start going bad for a selected trader. Bear in mind that not all the good traders are those featured in the top lists, but some real gems may be lurking in lower rankings too and always be skeptical of those with impeccable statistics or numbers that look too good to be true as this may simply mean they are leaving losing trades open for longer and it may end up in disaster for both you and them.
I still have a conservative approach and prefer traders that have a proven consistent performance even if profits are not as impressive, since the money that is generated from 10 such traders nicely piles up into my account and allows me to have a much better and more relaxed life.
“Profits are now usually a few hundreds per week, but I would have never imagined that an instant lottery and some effective copying would have changed my life so much!” – Bod Brown
I can now afford to splash out on loved ones or a nice holiday and have more time to watch a football match or head down the pub. I am not saying I will quit my job, since I am self-employed anyway and like the hands-on nature of what I do, but copy trading has brought me a sense of financial security and freedom that I had never in the past experienced or imagined was possible.
I am still pretty clueless about the markets but I do let my money work for me and copy trading was the ideal solution. If I could pull it though then maybe so can you, but please remember to stay composed and careful and not risk money that you cannot afford to lose in the first place. Good luck to all and happy copying, cause unlike in the classroom, in this context copying is good and if you are good at it you can gloat to all your friends!
Cheers
Bod Brown
