Leader / Follower
In a trade copier, the leader is the account a trader places orders in directly — it's the source of every trade. A follower is an account that receives copies of the leader's trades automatically, without the trader touching that account at all. A single leader can fan out to many followers at once, each sized independently.
The leader account is mirror-only in the sense that matters most: nothing is ever placed on the leader as a result of copying. The leader only ever sends; it never receives. Orders flow one direction, from the trade you actually made to every connected follower.
Why it matters
This one-way structure is what makes multi-account trading manageable. A trader with, say, one funded account and three evaluation accounts across different prop firms wants to make one trading decision and have it show up correctly sized everywhere else — not worry about which account is 'in charge' or whether a follower's own activity could somehow feed back into the leader.
It also defines fault isolation: if a follower account is disconnected, locked, or rejects an order, that has no effect on the leader or on any other follower. Each follower is evaluated against its own connection status and risk settings independently.
In MimikTrader
MimikTrader groups are built around exactly this leader/follower relationship: one leader account per group, any number of follower accounts, and a strict one-way flow. The leader account never has an order placed on it by the copier — it only ever generates the trades that get copied out.
Example
A trader sets their personally-traded funded account as the leader in a MimikTrader group, then adds two evaluation accounts as followers. When they buy 2 NQ contracts in the leader account, each follower places its own order sized by its own multiplier. If one follower account happens to be locked from a risk breach, that follower simply doesn't receive the copy — the leader account and the other follower are unaffected.
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