What is Exposure?
Quick answer
Exposure is how much of your money is at risk in the market at a given time, across all your open positions. Managing exposure means limiting how much can be committed at once, so a bad stretch cannot put your whole account at risk. In copy trading, an exposure limit caps how much copied positions can add up to.
Exposure is the total amount you have at stake in the market right now. Even if each individual trade is sized sensibly, the sum of many open positions can add up to more risk than you intend, which is why exposure is worth tracking on its own.
What exposure means
Your exposure is the combined value of your open positions, or how much of your capital is committed and moving with the market. More exposure means more can be gained or lost on a given market move. Managing it means setting a ceiling on how much can be committed at once, so that a run of trades, or several positions moving against you together, cannot put your entire account at risk.
Why it matters in copy trading
When you follow active leaders, trades can stack up, and without a limit your total exposure could climb higher than you are comfortable with. An exposure limit caps how much copied positions can add up to, working alongside a sizing multiplier (how big each trade is) and a daily-loss cap (how much you can lose in a day). Together, these keep the overall risk of copying within bounds you set.
Frequently asked questions
Back to the full copy trading glossary, or read the complete guide to copy trading.