they have the right to see their trades. Even goldman sach (clearing market maker) firm can see their clients (institutional) trade.
Why not keep changing brokers every 3-4 months. Brokers have seen 1001 clients get lucky from the beginning and then lose it all. So the OP would just be another 'lucky new client' to start with. But say you stay for a year and keep posting great results then the broker might get interested and yes, copying client orders has gone on since the beginning of time (but probably not as much as the OP thinks). But if you are making money then 3-4 months won't be enough of a track record and they won't notice you at all. Then after 18 months go back for another 3-4 months and again (unless you're trading size) you won't be noticed. Get 4-6 brokers and you'll be trading with each one every 18-24 months (give or take). Then you can own the world and nobody will notice
I actually used to care quite a bit about this topic, since I run a fully automated strategy with good results, and trade around 10000 sides a month. The longer I think about the issues, the less concerned I am about any sort of casual copying. I'm still weary about running managed accounts for unknown clients, but even that fear is fading.
Is that because you think no one can decode your system? if you are so confident, you could be wrong. Reverse engineering is not so hard as thought, at least easier than reinvention.
No, it's not becaus of "over confidence" at all. I've worked thru all sorts of possible scenarios, including illegal physical access to my hosted servers that run my code. I'm well aware of the risks. I've already talked about the reasons why I'm not concerned. First, thee markets are liquid, I'm not especially concerned about someone stealing my fills... If they're getting rich off of my work, doesn't mean I can't continue to profit off of it as well. Second, even my largely automated strategy still has discretionary components. When do I turn it on? When do I turn it off? How do I hedge? These are all important aspects that can't be copied. I've worked in technology and investing in startups all my life. Entreprenuers are always concerned about their intellectual property when talking to investors, etc. In reality, 99.9999 of the time, the secret sauce doesn't matter. It's the execution that matters. Facebook, Google, Twitter..... There's no secret, novel secret sauce in any of those.
spike500 is one of the few profitable traders on this forum. learned a lot from him in his posts back in 2007, old school!
Changing brokers in 3-4 months sounds okay too. It's all about preference. Btw, this thread makes me learn a lot of things. Such gratitude to all.