The one question I ask before anyone trades my money

Before I look at anyone’s returns, I want an answer to one plain question. If I hand my money over and something goes badly wrong, who can take it out of the account?

With most managed investments, the honest answer makes people a little uneasy. The money sits with the manager, and you are trusting their systems, their staff and their good intentions all at the same time. I like to know exactly where my money lives.

So when I came across a forex copy-trading service called High Capital Group, I skipped the headline numbers and went looking for that answer first. What I found is the reason you are reading this.

Disclosure: I may receive a referral reward from High Capital Group if you become a client through my link. It costs you nothing extra.

Your money stays in an account with your name on it

Here is how it works. You open your own account with a highly reputable, regulated forex broker, and you deposit your money with that broker. High Capital Group never holds it.

Their trades are then mirrored on your account automatically, through copy software that is free when you sign up with the broker through their link. They can place trades on your account. They have no access to withdraw any money from it.

Their own FAQ makes the point in a way I enjoyed. Because they only invoice you at the end of the month, after any profit has been made, you could in theory walk away owing them money. They, on the other hand, have no way at all to touch yours.

Your money is not locked in either. It stays with the broker, and you can withdraw it whenever you like through the broker’s own deposit and withdrawal options.

One detail people often blur: the broker is the regulated part of this arrangement. High Capital Group is the trading team whose trades you copy.

A frustrated investor went looking for a trader who would say yes

The company started with one man’s frustration. Co-founder Dan Leman was a full-time investor for years, and he kept running into the same wall. To get access to the best investments, it seemed you needed multiple 7 figures to invest.

Dan spent years looking for a trader who would work for people like him. Then he met Norman Hart.

Norman has an honours degree in economics. His skills have been responsible for tens of millions of dollars in investment, and companies paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars just to use the trading software he designed. He also wanted to help people, and he came with one condition. All he wanted to do was trade.

So Dan built the company around that. They began as Oak Valley Investments, a name you will still see on their videos and on their verified results, and they now run as High Capital Group. Their stated mission is to bring otherwise unavailable, high return investment opportunities to the retail investor.

The numbers, exactly as the company states them

I would rather give you the figures as High Capital Group publishes them and let you check them for yourself.

Drawdown, if the word is new to you, is the fall from an account’s highest point to its lowest dip before it climbs again. Results before 2018 came from their old legacy system, and the record for the current system runs from 2018 onwards. The team has over 10 years of trading experience behind it.

What made me take the record seriously is that it is verified in real time by a third party, FX Blue. The Past Performance page on their site links straight to it, so you can look at the live record yourself instead of trusting a screenshot.

I also respect the way they talk about risk. Their FAQ answers “Can I lose money?” with a plain yes and asks people not to invest money they can’t afford to lose. They refuse martingale, grid and hedging methods outright, which they call the fastest way to blow up an account. And if you like the trading but want to take less risk, or more, you can set your own risk level and trade more or less aggressively than the main account.

Opens High Capital Group’s site. The Past Performance page has the video and the live third-party record.

They only get paid after you make money

There is no upfront fee. High Capital Group takes 30% of profits, and only after you have made the money. The fee is worked out on a high water mark, which means that after a losing month you only pay on new profit above your account’s previous high point, so you never pay twice for the same ground.

The minimum is US$1,000, held in your own broker account. They ask for leverage of at least 30:1 on the account. And because the trades copy across automatically, you do not need to know anything about forex to take part. Norman’s team spends the hours on the charts.

It suits some people far better than others

High Capital Group says its service suits a wide range of people, from seasoned professionals to complete beginners. Here is how I would sort it.

None of this is personal financial advice, and I don’t know your situation. If you are unsure, talk it over with a financial adviser you trust before you put a dollar in.

How I would check it out, one step at a time

1. Watch the short video on their home page. It explains the copy-trading set-up better than I can in writing.
2. Open the Past Performance page and click through to the live FX Blue record. Go through it month by month, not just the totals.
3. Read the FAQ. It covers fees, the high water mark, drawdown, brokers and withdrawals in plain words.
4. If it fits, click Get Started and choose your region. The broker depends on where in the world you live, and US and non-US residents follow different steps.

If you have a question before you decide, you can email the team at support@highcapitalgroup.com.

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