The short answer
- What it is
- You pick one account as the leader. Every order, price change and cancel on it is mirrored to the followers you choose, including stop-loss and take-profit brackets. Exits always copy.
- Accounts
- The accounts in a group share one connection: the same Rithmic login or the same TopstepX key. Lightwick’s simulated accounts can follow too, and a sim leader can only lead other sim accounts. Topstep excludes Live Funded Accounts from API trading, so those stay in TopstepX.
- Cost
- Copy trading is part of the Trader plan, $29 a month after beta and free while the beta runs. It runs on your Mac, so Lightwick needs to stay open.
How a copy group works
Lightwick organises copying into groups. A group has one leader and one or more followers, a name, and a colour that shows up in the accounts table so you can see at a glance which accounts move together. You trade the leader exactly as you normally would, from the chart, the DOM or the order ticket, and the followers keep up on their own.
- The leader
- The account you actually trade. Nothing about it changes; it is just the one the others watch. An account can be in only one group, and a leader can’t follow someone else, so there are no chains.
- The followers
- Each follower gets its own size setting, so a 100K account can take twice the leader’s size while a 25K account takes one contract every time. Followers need to share the leader’s connection, or be one of Lightwick’s simulated accounts.
- Start and pause
- Each group has a switch. Pause it and new orders stop being mirrored; start it and they pick up again. A group starts paused every time Lightwick opens, so a relaunch never sends orders you didn’t just turn on. If you want it running from the moment the app opens, there is a setting for that.
- Activity
- Anything the copier couldn’t do, like an entry a follower’s risk limits refused, shows up under Activity in the group with the account and the time, so you are never guessing why a follower looks different.
Three ways to size a follower
Prop firm accounts rarely come in matching sizes, so each follower picks how it scales the leader. Here is what each option does when the leader buys three contracts.
| Sizing | How it works | Leader buys 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Same size | The follower holds exactly what the leader holds. The right choice when two accounts are the same size. | Follower buys 3. |
| Multiplier | The leader’s size times a factor from 0.1× to 20×, rounded to whole contracts and never below one while the leader is in a trade. Use it when one account is a bigger or smaller version of another. | At 2×, the follower buys 6. At 0.5×, it buys 2, because 1.5 rounds up. |
| Fixed | The follower holds a set number of contracts, from 1 to 500, whenever the leader is in a trade, whatever the leader’s size. Scaling in on the leader doesn’t add to a fixed follower; it is already at its size. | Fixed at 1, the follower buys 1. If the leader adds 2 more, the follower stays at 1. |
Direction always matches. A follower is long when the leader is long, short when the leader is short, and flat when the leader is flat. Sizing only decides how much.
What gets copied, and what happens when a fill is missed
New orders, price changes and cancels on the leader are mirrored to each follower. If the leader’s entry carries a stop and a target, the followers get them too, resized to the follower’s quantity and placed through the follower’s own broker, so each account keeps a proper OCO pair even if Lightwick were to close. Exits always copy, so a follower never stays in a trade the leader has left.
The awkward moment in copy trading is a limit order that fills on the leader but not on a follower. Markets move, and two accounts don’t always sit in the same place in the queue. Each group decides what to do about it:
- Fill at market. The default. When the leader’s order fills and a follower’s copy still hasn’t after a short wait, 2.5 seconds unless you change it, the copy is cancelled and the follower is filled at market. Followers stay in step with the leader, at the cost of a possibly worse price. You can set the wait anywhere from half a second to 30 seconds.
- Leave it working. A missed entry stays at its price, so the follower only gets in if the market comes back to it. If the leader reduces or exits first, the working entry is cancelled. Missed exits still fill at market after the wait, because being left in a trade is worse than a few ticks of slippage.
If a follower can’t copy an entry at all, because the account is disconnected or its risk limits refuse the order, the entry is skipped and noted under Activity rather than retried into a position you didn’t intend.
Read your firm’s rules first
Every futures prop firm has an opinion on copy trading, and they don’t agree. Most allow it across accounts in your own name and forbid it with anyone else. Some cap how many accounts you can trade at once, some require every account to trade in the same direction, and a few forbid copying software on funded accounts altogether. Rules also differ between evaluation, funded and live accounts at the same firm.
Topstep is a useful example because it publishes the details. Its built-in copier works on Trading Combine and Express Funded Accounts only, not Live Funded Accounts. The lead account has to have the lowest maximum position size in the group, followers are unlinked when you request a payout, and turning the copier off mid-trade flattens every follower. Topstep also says third-party apps connect at your own risk and that its risk rules apply to every order, however it was placed.
Before you copy anything: read the current rules for your exact account type, check any cap on account count or combined position size, and if two of the firm’s own pages disagree, ask support in writing and keep the answer. Our firm guides link to each firm’s official rules.
Set up a group in Lightwick
It takes a couple of minutes. Start with a sim follower if you want to watch it work before real accounts are involved.
- Connect your accounts. Sign in with your Rithmic login or TopstepX key and every eligible account under it appears. The setup guide covers the first sign-in.
- Open Copy Trader. It lives in the Accounts panel and in the Window menu. Choose New copy group and pick the account you trade as the leader.
- Add followers and size them. Add each account that should follow and choose Same size, Multiplier or Fixed for it. Accounts already in another group won’t be offered.
- Decide on missed fills. Fill at market with a short wait suits most people. Leave it working if you would rather miss a trade than pay up for it.
- Save, then start copying. A new group doesn’t copy anything until it is saved and switched on. Once it is running, the leader and its followers are drawn as a connected group in the accounts table.
- Check Activity after the first few trades. Skipped orders and warnings land there. If a follower looks different from the leader, that is where the reason will be.
Copy trading runs on your Mac, so keep Lightwick open while you want it active. Price alerts work the same way, and the DOM and order ticket both drive the leader like any other account.
Common questions
Does Lightwick need to stay open for copying to work?
Yes. Copying runs inside the app on your Mac, not on a server, so Lightwick has to be running. It is fine in the background while you use something else. If you quit, copying stops, and a group starts paused the next time you open the app unless you have told it to start automatically.
Can I practise with a simulated account first?
Yes. Add a sim account as a follower of a real leader to watch how copying behaves before you add real followers. You can also run a sim leader with sim followers to try the whole thing with nothing at stake. A sim account cannot lead a real one.
What if a follower’s risk limits refuse the order?
The entry is skipped and a warning appears under Activity in the group. Further entries for that follower are held back until the leader is flat again, so a follower never ends up in a lopsided position. Exits are different: Lightwick keeps retrying them, so a follower never stays in a trade the leader has left.
Is there a limit on how many followers I can have?
Not in Lightwick. A group can have as many followers as you have eligible accounts, and you can run more than one group as long as each account is in only one of them. Your firm may set its own cap on how many accounts you can trade at once, so check that first.
Further reading
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