Do I need my computer on to copy signals?

Yes, it does. And it is worth understanding why, because the answer decides how much copying signals is going to cost you.

Why it is needed

Orders are not sent by the channel and not by your phone: they are sent by MetaTrader. The program that copies the signals lives inside your MetaTrader 4 or 5, and MetaTrader has to be open and online to send an order to your broker.

If the computer switches off, restarts for an update or loses the internet, that signal was not copied. It is not copied later: the signal has gone.

And signals do not arrive in office hours. Gold moves at night, the market opens on Sunday afternoon and channels post at any hour.

The three ways out

1. Leave your own computer on

Free, and it is what almost everybody tries first. It works if you have a machine you can really leave running: no automatic updates restarting it, no sleeping when you close the lid, and a stable connection.

What usually fails is not the computer: it is life. The power goes, somebody switches it off, you take it with you.

2. Rent a server

A Windows VPS is a computer that is not yours and never switches off. You install your MetaTrader there and leave it running.

MetaQuotes rents one from about $12.80 a month paying for the year, or about $15 on its own, and you hire it from inside MetaTrader itself. Other providers charge more.

The catch: to set it up you need a computer once, and from then on you administer it. If the server stops being updated or MetaTrader closes itself, nobody tells you.

3. Let your account run on someone else's server

Instead of renting the machine and administering it, you hire the service already set up: you hand over the access details of your trading account and somebody keeps MetaTrader running for you. You install nothing and manage it from your phone.

Two things to check before handing anything over:

• What details they ask for. This needs the password of your trading account. Ask how it is stored and what happens if you cancel.
• Make sure it is not your withdrawal password. At most brokers you can create a trade-only password, which cannot take money out. Use that one.

Which one suits you

If you have a machine you can genuinely leave running, start there: do not pay to solve a problem you do not have.

If you do not — or if you tried and it switched off twice — the question is not which is cheapest, it is what missing a signal costs you.

Copying signals can lose money. Keeping the terminal running does not change that: the only thing it changes is that the order goes in when you decided it should.

How we do it

Norte Copier has both. If you have a computer, the program goes inside your MetaTrader and we never ask for your password: the program is already inside your open session.

If you do not, your account runs on our servers and you install nothing: you type the access details and in a minute it is copying. If you get a computer later, you move plan.

If you want the detail of both paths, it is in copying with no PC.