Guide · Trade Copier
How to copy trades between your own accounts in NinjaTrader 8
To copy trades between your own accounts in NinjaTrader 8, you make one account the leader and the others followers: a trade copier repeats each leader order, including entries, ATM brackets, changes and cancellations, on every follower with that follower's own size and contract mapping. Run the setup on simulation accounts first, start with every account flat, and check that your broker and prop firm allow copying between your accounts.
Updated · 7 min read · TapeCrest
What does a trade copier do?
A trade copier watches one account and repeats its orders on others. In TapeCrest Copier, an add-on for NinjaTrader 8, the account you trade is the leader and each account that receives copies is a follower. You keep trading the leader the way you do today, from Chart Trader, the SuperDOM or an ATM strategy (NinjaTrader's Advanced Trade Management, which attaches a stop loss and a take-profit order to your entry), and the Copier sends every follower its own copy.
Three rules explain most of what you see:
- It copies orders, not fills. Market, limit, stop market, stop limit and MIT (market if touched) orders are copied, together with price and quantity changes and cancellations. Each copy goes to the follower's own account and fills there, so fill prices and times can differ between accounts.
- Each follower has its own size and mapping. Size is a multiple of the leader's order or a fixed number of contracts, with a maximum per order. Mapping picks the instrument: the same contract, or its micro or mini in the same month.
- Each follower carries its own bracket. Once a follower's entry fills, its copies of the leader's bracket orders are placed as an OCO pair (one cancels other: when one fills, the other is cancelled).
The Copier makes no trading decisions of its own and never opens a position by itself. It repeats what you do on the leader.
What do you need before you start?
| Check | Details |
|---|---|
| Your own accounts | Copy only between accounts you own. Your broker and your prop firm decide whether copying between them is allowed, so check their current rules first. |
| One NinjaTrader 8 | Leader and followers connected in the same NinjaTrader 8 on one computer, for orders and for prices. |
| Supported accounts | NinjaTrader 8 simulation accounts whose names start with Sim, and Tradovate accounts in US dollars on a connection that supports broker account locks. Other connections and Market Replay accounts are not listed in this version. |
| A flat start | Leader and every selected follower flat, with no position and no working orders, when you press Start copier. Positions that already exist are not copied to catch up. |
| The window open | NinjaTrader 8 and the Copier window stay open while you copy. Closing the window stops copying and leaves positions and orders as they are. |
| Internet | For the TapeCrest access check at start and its renewal in the background. Order Flow+ and Tick Replay are not needed. |
How do you set up copying in NinjaTrader 8?
Run your first session on simulation accounts, which cannot lose money. With TapeCrest Copier installed and activated:
- Add a follower account. In the Control Center's Accounts tab, right-click, choose Add Simulation Account and name it, for example,
Sim102. Check thatSim101andSim102are flat. When the market is closed, connect to NinjaTrader's Simulated Data Feed. - Open the Copier. Choose New → TapeCrest Copier and leave SIM accounts only ticked, so only simulation accounts can copy.
- Choose the leader. Click Role ▾ on
Sim101, choose Leader and select Save copy settings. - Choose the follower. Click Role ▾ on
Sim102, choose Follower, tick Include this follower when I start the copier, keep Match / multiply leader quantity at1, set Maximum contracts per order to5, keep Same instrument and select Save copy settings. - Check without orders. Open Tools ▾ → Copy setup & order-free check…, enter the contract you trade as Sample contract, for example
MNQ 12-26, and select Check setup · no orders. It sends nothing; expectSETUP SNAPSHOT OK. - Start. Press Start copier. The header reads ● COPIER RUNNING and the follower's Copy status reads Copying.
- Trade the leader. On
Sim101, buy one contract at market with an ATM strategy that has one stop loss and one profit target. When the follower's entry fills, its own bracket follows, and Position sync on View → Copying reads Synced. - Move the stop, then exit. Move the leader's stop: the Event log shows
Change sent, thenChange confirmed. Close the leader's trade: the follower exits with its own copy, and its remaining bracket order is cancelled. - Practise the emergency buttons. Flat followers closes the followers, keeps the leader's trade and pauses copying into them until you restart the copier. Panic stops the copier at once and lists the managed accounts for closing; a leader without a protection session of its own is not in that list, so close it yourself. Both show the exact accounts for review before anything is closed.
How do size and contract mapping work?
Each copied order is sized on its own and rounded to the nearest whole contract, a half rounding up. An order that comes out below one contract, or above the follower's Maximum contracts per order, is not sent to that follower at all; it is never cut down to fit. For example:
| Follower setting | Leader order | Follower order |
|---|---|---|
| Multiplier 1, same instrument | Buy 1 MNQ | Buy 1 MNQ |
| Multiplier 2 | Buy 1 MNQ | Buy 2 MNQ |
| Multiplier 0.5 | Buy 3 MNQ | Buy 2 MNQ (1.5 rounds up) |
| Multiplier 0.3 | Buy 1 MNQ | Not sent (0.3 rounds to 0) |
| Fixed 2 contracts | Buy 1 or buy 4 | Buy 2, on every copied order |
| Micro → Mini | Buy 1 MNQ | Buy 1 NQ, ten times the exposure |
| Mini → Micro | Buy 1 NQ | Buy 1 MNQ, a tenth of the exposure |
Mapping covers six contract families, NQ/MNQ, ES/MES, YM/MYM, RTY/M2K, GC/MGC and CL/MCL, always in the same contract month. Quantity is not converted and prices are copied unchanged, so set the multiplier and the maximum with the mapping in mind. Because rounding happens per order, scaling in and out with fractional multipliers can leave a follower with a different position from the leader; whole-number multipliers avoid that.
How do you protect each account?
Copying works without protection, and every account can carry its own plan under Risk limits and Trading hours:
- Trailing drawdown: how far the account's P&L may fall from its peak since activation. For example, with 500 allowed and a peak of +200, the limit triggers at −300.
- Maximum session loss and Profit target, both measured from activation.
- Blocked hours and news windows: up to three windows a day, plus windows around the release times in a news CSV file you import.
- Lock / pause account…: once protection is active, a manual pause or lock for 15 minutes, 2 hours, a custom number of minutes, until the session ends or until midnight on your computer's clock.
On a simulation account, a limit pauses new copied entries into that account. On a Tradovate account it requests the broker's own account lock, which can close positions and cancel orders. A limit is a trigger, not an exit price: the final loss can be larger than the number you set. Your firm may measure drawdown differently, so keep your limits well inside its numbers.
What happens if the licence check fails mid-session?
TapeCrest Copier never cancels an order, closes a position or unlocks an account because of a licence answer. If access lapses during a run, full exits, cancellations, bracket orders moved closer to price, Flat followers, Panic and every armed protection keep working. New entries, scale-ins, partial exits and wider stops are not copied for the rest of that run: once everything is flat, pause the copier, make sure access is active and start it again. Starting a run always needs a current, verified access.
Which mistakes should you avoid?
- Trading a follower by hand while it is part of a running copier. A follower position the leader does not have is closed, and one opened while the leader is flat sets off the automatic panic, which stops the copier and closes this run's followers.
- Two tools on one account. Do not run another copier on the same accounts, and do not protect a copied account with TapeCrest Risk Manager at the same time.
- Forgetting a roll. Test every mapping on simulation with the exact contract month you trade, and again after each roll.
- Expecting identical fills. Fast markets and larger sizes widen the difference between accounts.
Try it
TapeCrest Copier comes with a 7-day free trial without a card, then a one-time lifetime licence (pricing). The Trade Copier page has an interactive demo of a leader, its followers and per-account limits, and Prop trading walks through a checklist before you copy. If you trade your accounts directly without copying, the free Risk Manager adds limits and locks for Tradovate USD accounts.