Guides
Checking whether a trader is real, proving that you are, or working out why the account is not working. Every guide ends at the same request: every call, including the losers, timestamped before the fact, on a record nobody can edit.
Checking someone you found online?
Each platform fails differently — start with the one you found them on.
Is a Certain Discord Trader Legit?You cannot settle this from inside Discord.
Is a Certain X / Twitter Trader Real?A losing call can be deleted, so judge the account by what other people preserved.
Is a Certain Telegram Trader Legit?A broadcast controlled entirely by its admin, who can delete for everyone and edit silently.
Is a Certain WhatsApp Trader Legit?The weakest venue there is for a record: nothing public, and anything can be deleted for everyone.
Is a Certain Reddit Trader Legit?The most auditable social venue: edits are flagged and removals leave a visible placeholder.
Is a Certain YouTube Trader Legit?An uploaded video cannot be altered after publishing, so a dated call inside one is real evidence of what was said and when.
Is a Certain Substack Trader Legit?A Substack post can be edited after publication without any visible marker, but the email already sent to subscribers cannot be changed.
Is a Certain TradingView Trader Legit?A published TradingView idea is timestamped and its chart is frozen at publish, so it is genuinely evidence of what someone said and when.
Is a Certain StockTwits Trader Legit?StockTwits attaches a bullish or bearish tag and a symbol to each message, so its calls are the easiest of any social venue to score against the chart.
Weighing a paid room?
Whether the signals mean anything, whether the price clears your account's hurdle rate, and where the scam line actually is.
Are Discord Trading Room Signals Real?Some are real and most rooms cannot demonstrate which, because Discord lets any call be edited or deleted without leaving a gap.
Is a Discord Trading Group Worth It?Divide the annual cost by your account size and you have the hurdle: a $99/month room on a $10,000 account must add 11.9% a year before you break even.
Is a Certain Discord Trading Chatroom a Scam?Separating a room committing fraud from a room that simply cannot prove anything.
Checking the record they showed you?
6 artifacts, each with its own failure: one that survives a screenshot check still fails the next.
How Do You Spot a Fake PnL Screenshot?You largely cannot — any number on a page can be edited in the browser in seconds.
How Do You Spot a Fake Win Rate?Most inflated win rates are not fabricated. They are constructed.
How Do You Spot a Fake Track Record?Assume the trades are real and ask how they were chosen.
How Do You Spot a Fake Backtest?Ask how many versions were tried before this one.
How Do You Spot a Fake Trading Testimonial?The forged ones are the smaller problem.
What Does a 'Verified' Trading Badge Actually Mean?Usually less than it appears.
What does a metric on someone's record actually mean?
Every figure a record states, defined and re-derived from its formula.
What Is Risk-Multiple Efficiency?Net R kept divided by gross R risked, shown as a percentile against your own last 20 readings.
What Is an R-Multiple?An R-multiple is a trade's profit or loss divided by the amount that was at risk when it was opened.
What Is Trading Expectancy?Expectancy is what a strategy makes per trade on average, combining win rate and payoff size into one number.
What Is the Sortino Ratio?The Sortino ratio measures return per unit of downside volatility: excess return divided by the standard deviation of negative returns only.
What Is the Sharpe Ratio?The Sharpe ratio is a strategy's return above the risk-free rate divided by the standard deviation of its returns.
What Is a Trading Win Rate?A win rate is the percentage of trades that closed in profit.
What Is Profit Factor?Profit factor is total gross profit divided by total gross loss.
What Is Maximum Drawdown?Maximum drawdown is the largest percentage fall from a peak in account value to the lowest point before a new peak.
What Is Risk of Ruin?Risk of ruin is the probability that a strategy loses enough capital to stop being viable, given its edge and its bet size.
What Is the Kelly Criterion?The Kelly criterion is the bet fraction that maximises the long-run growth rate of capital, calculated as f = p − q/b for a payoff of b to 1.
How Do You Calculate Position Size?Position size is the account size multiplied by the risk percentage, divided by the distance from entry to stop.
What Is a Risk/Reward Ratio?A risk/reward ratio compares the distance from entry to target against the distance from entry to stop.
What Is a Breakeven Win Rate?The breakeven win rate is the percentage of trades that must win for a strategy to break even at a given payoff ratio, calculated as 1 ÷ (1 + R).
What Is Recovery Factor?Recovery factor is net profit divided by maximum drawdown, so it measures how much return a strategy produced per unit of its worst decline.
What Does Correlation to SPX Mean?Correlation to SPX measures how closely a strategy's returns move with the S&P 500, on a scale from −1 to +1.
What Does Average Trade Duration Tell You?Average trade duration is the mean time between opening and closing a position, and it says more about a trader than any return figure does.
Proving your own record?
Who is asking changes what you have to show, and how much of it.
Does a Track Record Help With a Prop Firm Evaluation?A prop firm decides on its own evaluation, so an external record will not get you funded.
How Do You Prove a Track Record to a Trading Partner?A partner is exposed to how you behave in a drawdown, not only to your returns.
Is your own execution the problem, not your picks?
What the common failures cost, in arithmetic rather than adjectives — doubling a stop once drops a trade's average outcome from $130 to $40.
Why Can't I Make Money Trading?Most unprofitable trading fails for one of four reasons, and picking the wrong stocks is rarely the one.
Why Is 'What Should I Buy?' the Wrong Question?Two traders can buy exactly the same stocks on exactly the same days and end the year far apart, because entries are the smallest part of a result.
Why Do I Keep Breaking My Own Trading Rules?A trader with a +0.65R edge who breaks their rules on one trade in ten, and loses 3R when they do, ends 100 trades at +28.5R instead of +65R.
Why Do I Move My Stop Loss, and What Does It Cost?Moving a stop feels like a small adjustment because only one number changes.
How Do I Stop Revenge Trading?Revenge trading is not an emotional failing with a vague cost.
Why Do I Cut Winners Early and Hold Losers Too Long?Cutting winners and holding losers is the one habit that can turn a genuinely accurate trader into a losing one.
Am I Overtrading, and What Is It Costing Me?Overtrading is usually diagnosed by feel and it should be diagnosed by arithmetic.
Is My Trading Edge Real, or Is It Luck?Thirty trades cannot tell a 55% edge from a coin flip.
Why Does Posting PnL Screenshots Backfire?Posting profit screenshots costs the poster twice.
How Do You Get Trading Discipline Without Willpower?Discipline framed as willpower asks you to be strongest at your weakest moment, which is why it fails predictably rather than randomly.
How Do I Know If I'm a Good Trader?Not from your account balance, at any sample size you are likely to have.
Am I Gambling or Trading?The difference is not what you trade or how fast.
Why Do I Keep Blowing Up My Account?Blow-ups are a sizing failure far more often than a selection failure.
Trading a prop firm's evaluation account?
What the drawdown rule does to your sizing, what the firm owns, and the checks that outlast a rule change.
What Happens to My Track Record If I Leave a Prop Firm?You leave with a claim and no artifact.
Is a Certain Prop Firm Legit?Judge the structure rather than the marketing, because rules change and structure does not.
What Should a Prop Firm Trader's Journal Record?Three fields an ordinary journal has no reason to carry, all of them about remaining room.
About to pay a coach, mentor or room?
Grading the evidence behind a coach or a mentor, before the money moves.
Is a Certain Trading Coach Legit?A trading coach is checkable, and the check is not whether their results look good.
How Do I Tell If a Trading Mentor Is Any Good?Legitimacy and quality are different questions. This one grades the advice.
What Should I Ask a Trading Coach Before Paying?The useful questions are the ones with checkable answers.
Is Trading Coaching Worth It?Coaching is worth it when the improvement it produces clears its fee, and that is computable rather than a matter of opinion.
How Do I Commit to a Trade and Actually Stick to It?A plan is rarely abandoned.
Do I Need a Trading Accountability Partner?An accountability partner works on the trades you tell them about, which is the limitation nobody mentions.
Journal, track record, sealed commit — which is which?
The category nouns settled, because the three get used interchangeably and need opposite things.