How to Copy Trades Across Prop Firm Accounts

The most common setup failure is discovering, an hour into configuring accounts, that the copier does not support your prop firm's platform. Check this first.

If you run FTMO funded accounts and the copier does not support DXTrade, it cannot connect to those accounts at all. Trada supports 9 platforms — MT4, MT5, cTrader, DXTrade, TradeLocker, MatchTrader for Forex/CFD, and NinjaTrader, Rithmic, DXFeed for Futures. Whichever copier you use, confirm it covers every platform in your mix before you look at features or pricing.

For a full comparison of copier types and what to evaluate, see What Is a Trade Copier?

1. 1Log in to the copier dashboard
2. 2Navigate to Accounts and select Connect New Account
3. 3Select the platform (MT4, MT5, DXTrade, cTrader, etc.)
4. 4Enter your broker server address and API credentials
5. 5Verify: account balance matches your terminal, open positions are visible

The master does not need to be a prop firm account. Most traders run the master on a standard retail account, where no challenge rules apply, and copy from there to the funded accounts. Note that MT4 connects as a receiver but not as a copier source — don't set an MT4 account as your master.

Repeat the connection process for each prop firm account. The platform and credentials differ by firm:

• DXTrade accounts (FTMO, Apex): use the DXTrade server URL from your prop firm's account portal and a dedicated API key, not your web login credentials.
• MT4/MT5 accounts: use the broker server address shown in your terminal (each broker has a different server name). Some prop firms restrict API access to specific IP ranges.
• Rithmic / NinjaTrader accounts: use the API credentials from your platform settings. Some require app registration.

1. 1Go to Copy Trading and select Create New Copier
2. 2Select your master account
3. 3Select your follower accounts
4. 4Choose a lot sizing mode

Proportional is the right default for most prop firm setups. If the master is $10,000 and a follower is $25,000, the follower's position is 2.5x the master's in absolute terms but identical in percentage risk — the same trade, scaled to each account's size.

Daily Loss Limit

Set the daily loss threshold 0.3-0.5% below the firm's published limit to absorb spread and slippage. Give it an automatic action — Stop Copier or Flatten Account — not Notification alone. A notification fires while the position is still open; an action set below the firm's limit stops further copying before you breach it. Daily thresholds reset at 00:00 UTC.

Example: FTMO's 5% daily loss limit configures to 4.5-4.7% in your copier.

Overall Loss Threshold

Set the overall threshold to the firm's account-loss limit minus a buffer. For Apex's 6% trailing drawdown, configure 5.5%. This threshold is measured from the account balance when the follower was added, and it does not reset — once triggered, the account stays stopped until you review and reset it manually.

Working Hours

Restrict copying to the sessions your firm allows. Set the time blocks during which trades copy, with optional auto-close when a block ends. Trada does not auto-detect news releases. If your firm restricts trading around high-impact events, schedule your working hours to avoid them or pause the copier yourself — the copier enforces the schedule, not the news calendar.

Instrument Blocklist

Add any firm-restricted instruments to the per-receiver blacklist. Trades on those instruments from the master will not copy to that follower. Check your firm's terms for restricted symbols, pairs, or products.

Look up the firm's current published rules — daily loss %, max account loss %, profit target %, and any restricted instruments. Enter those values into the protection settings for that follower account, each threshold 0.3–0.5% below the firm's published limit to absorb spread and slippage. Thresholds can be set in % or $, at the daily and overall horizons.

When you run several firms at once, each follower keeps its own independent thresholds — they do not interfere. For how cloud-native setups compare to VPS bridges on this overhead, see multi-account trading without a VPS.

1. 1Open a minimum-lot test trade on your master account
2. 2Verify it appears on all followers within seconds
3. 3Verify lot size is correct for each follower (proportional scaling is working)
4. 4Close the test trade and verify the close propagates to all followers
5. 5Check the log: every operation, success, and failure should be recorded with a timestamp

Do not skip this step. A test trade costs you the spread on a minimum lot. A misconfigured copier going live can take down several funded accounts at once.

Set the copier to Active. After your first live trade, verify:

• All accounts filled with correct lot sizes
• Audit log shows the full round-trip (entry and exit on each follower)
• No guardrail was unexpectedly triggered

Daily monitoring checklist: each account's P&L versus its daily loss limit, any protection triggers, any follower fill failures, and API key expiry dates.

Trada's trading journal syncs every closed trade from the connected accounts automatically — P&L per account, trade count, and protection activity. Execution data is read-only; you never type it in, and you don't need a spreadsheet to track it.