I've been trying different methods of investing and trading lately.

I wrote a few months ago how I downloaded a very sketchy, entirely possibly scam 'A.I.' trade bot which could day trade on my behalf for massive profits.

I actually found some success with this despite it not being AI in any capacity whatsoever. But I found it wasn't accomplishing what I wanted - to make money in the background rather than me micromanaging it every day - so I pulled the plug. It's a tool I can use later whenever I feel like it, even so.

For now though, I discovered the concept of 'copy trading'.

This is a lazy man's investment strategy, where you set up your account to mirror every trade action somebody or something makes (famously, Nancy Pelosi is a popular one to copy for obvious reasons). There's no need to care about a company's growth or hold any loyalty or faith in a CEO's KPI, no need to believe in a product or panic when somebody says something on social media. Just chill.

So, I plonked $500 on a Warren Buffet mirror, and then after seeing the notable success, about $300 on some random guy I've never heard of, but was among the top most copied traders and it was half his job to be there for people to copy.

He seemed active in the community discussing his processes and decisions to his copiers, and has been doing it on etoro.com since at least 2019.

This guy is fairly impressive. Looking at his trade history, he's made significant profits every year, but not so much as to be considered high risk. In fact, his risk level is ranked at 4/10.

2020 was apparently a pretty dazzling year, but 2024 is already shaping up to be quite a mighty profit.

Warren's had a few downers over the years, but still far better than I would do alone!

Well, here's my results so far. The Warren Buffett trade copying has been on for quite a while now, but the new one - barely a couple of weeks - is already hot on his tail:

$80 return on $800 and counting. Not bad.

a 4% return in a couple of weeks is really impressive to me, as opposed to the 4.6% in a year I get from my bank savings account (which in UK bank terms is already pretty damn good). But Warren's returns are hardly anything to snort at, either, approaching a whopping 13% already!

My excitement for this is in the context of me not having to do anything. If I was day trading aggressively, I could get this kind of return and then some. But the fact the markets open pretty much when I'm asleep, and close when I wake up, It's literally making money while I sleep.

I'm not so naive though. The economy is balancing on brittle bones the world over right now and there may be some looming threats over the horizon where this could easily come crashing down depending on how well these traders mitigate their risks. But I've got it set so things cut off at about $15 loss, so at the very worst, I lose about $30 and 0 hours of my time.

I've decided I'll be adding more to these guys here and there over the coming weeks and months. The less I trust banks to function, the more I want to diversify in this way. Now the goal of moving to England is pretty much dead, I feel like I can make more use of my money rather than sitting there barely keeping up with inflation for the sake of a visa agreement.

Get rich, and quick

If I decided to put all the money for the visa savings into these copy traders - 62,500 GBP at the time I transferred it (although now, 88,000 and soon 115,000...), I'd potentially get more than the average UK annual salary ROI - while I slept.

Is 4/10 risk factor worth it?

Probably not. But fun to think about.