What 3 years of paying for copy trading and signals actually got me mostly nothing

Literally everyone I know who's tried paid copy trading or signal services has lost money.

Me included.

Around €800 over three years between Telegram signals, eToro popular investors and a 3commas subscription that ate any edge that might have been there.

The Telegram channels are obviously the worst. One guy I was paying €40/month was just posting calls in two directions, screenshotting the wins, scrubbing the losses from the channel history. Took me a few months to catch on. Classic.

eToro popular investors. Looked more legit until I realized the top-ranked guy I was copying was running 50x leverage on micro-positions specifically to inflate his percentage returns – the strategy works fine in trending markets and explodes in chop.

When his streak ended I ate it harder than my position size suggested I would.

3commas was just death by subscription.

The calls themselves weren't bad. They just weren't profitable enough to cover the monthly fee plus the marginal trading fees the bot's high turnover created. Net negative even when individual calls were technically winners.

I've been small-testing Bybits native copy trading for around 5 months. It's not amazing one of the two traders I'm allocated to is positive, the other is not profitable lol. But at least I'm not paying a subscription on top, and the trader's actual P&L is visible so I can verify they're not faking numbers.

I’ve read that some people even try trading against the trader’s direction instead., this is real profitable?

Honestly that's the bar I've lowered to. "Not faking numbers" should not be a feature.

bigger picture i don't think there's a copy trading product that consistently makes retail money during sideways or low-vol regimes. I'm running it more as ongoing entertainment than as alpha generation at this point.

if you're paying for signals or subscriptions, stop.

you're funding someone else's lifestyle.