How many people can follow your edge before the crowd itself starts affecting the edge?
We’re on the same page.
That’s an excellent question, and one that very few people think about. The crowding effect is a serious issue.
That’s why I believe there should be some limits on how widely signals are distributed, and even more so when someone decides to publicly teach the actual strategy.
If someone ignores this, I think they may be destroying their own edge with their own hands. Or, more cynically, perhaps there was never any real edge to begin with and it was just marketing and promotion.
share a public trading journal linked to their trading account
That’s a very good approach. I’d go one step further and say the journal should be verified by an independent third party.
Ideally, it shouldn’t be provided by the broker or prop firm either, because that can create a potential conflict of interest if they have an incentive to attract users.
The verification should be independent and focused purely on proving the trader’s actual track record.
The problem with sellers of signals is that if they're profitable, why sell and your title and this thread is all about hits that question perfectly.
I will be impress if they are really profitable and because they have a lot of time and able to make good trades, they have free sessions which is giving back to the community.
That’s the main point I was trying to make. Trading returns are percentage-based, and not everyone has enough capital for even a good percentage return to meet their financial expectations. So for a genuinely profitable trader, selling signals or providing other services can be a legitimate way to scale beyond their own capital.
As for offering everything for free, I see two reasons why a profitable trader might not want to do that. The first is simply that they also need to make money from their skills and time. The second is that, like many traders, I believe a good strategy can lose part of its edge once it becomes publicly known and widely adopted. So keeping the actual strategy private while monetizing the results or signals can be perfectly reasonable.
As for proving that a signal provider can actually trade, I would put much more weight on a transparent, verifiable track record through a third party than on screenshots, claims, or free trading sessions.
Many traders who sells signals just share what they got from channels and pretend they are analyze with their skills.
I completely agree with you. We’re on the same page here.
But what is the use of getting better capital when you can not trade?
Even if one should sell courses for higher capital, if you can not trade, the capital is basically a waste because you will still end up blowing the capital, and at the same time, after a bad experience with your courses, no one will come back for more of your offers
So if you lose sources of capital and you still don't have enough knowledge to trade, then everything is a total waste ..
You should focus on knowledge, get good knowledge on how to trade well, and then you will grow any available capital and also get more engagement after other traders find value in the knowledge that you sell, and so on
Glad it made sense, I think there are basically two groups: traders and people who pretend to be traders.
The second group often blames the customer when their course or method doesn't work: "You lack discipline," "Your psychology is weak," etc.
In my view, a real trader would never teach their actual trading method. They can teach concepts, fundamentals, and experience, and if they provide signals, they would keep that limited.
The fake trader relies on having more subscribers on their channel to earn more money, while the real trader actually has strategies they abide by and actually survive from what they earn on the live market with real proof of work.
I agree, but that's actually the point I was making. A real trader can be profitable and still not make much money from trading if they don't have enough capital. Selling signals or other products can be a way to scale beyond their own trading capital.
Because being a good trader isn't assurance of profit, but selling signals is.
They are into this business for the sure gain, since they discovered it's not possible to profit from trading in a solid way. It's similar to people who sell books or online courses on how to make money in different ways. They aren't using their methods to make money, rather they are making money from the sales of their content.
Yes, some people definitely do that.
But I believe a real trader can have sustainable profits. The issue is the amount of income, not whether it's sustainable.
Even if your strategy makes 10% a month, which is already very high, with $20,000 in capital that's only $2,000 a month. And if the return is lower, the income is even less.
These days, i often come across many subpar traders who have only recently started trading but already act like profitable professional traders, they confidently launch trading courses and offer paid classes just for signals that, as it turns out, have a low win rate. If you look more closely, all those trading results (profit screenshots) only show their profit levels, they delete all their losses because they know full well that new traders’ psychology tends to focus only on profits rather than the final result of a loss.
In reality, trading inevitably involves both losses and profits, what matters most is the final result over a full month, how much our trading account has grown in percentage terms. It doesn’t mean that a skilled trader is one who never loses, that’s a misconception. To be honest, i’m pretty fed up with those who just exploit newbies for their own gain. Often, when following the signals they provide, the end result is a loss (margin call or liquidation). Unfortunately, these mentors refuse to admit it and will blame us for failing to manage our money properly. If you’ve been in the trading game for a while and have attended various trading classes, you’ll agree with what i’m saying.
I completely agree with you, and I’m doing my best to help address this issue.
What this market is genuinely lacking is transparency and honesty. I believe those of us who share this perspective should make that our goal and do our part to promote a more transparent and honest culture in the trading space.
When I used to look for educational content regarding trading. There some few things I would look out for and one of them would be to the so-called professional traders who sell "signals" in their "VIP' telegram groups
There is also another breed that asks people to sign up using the link in their bio so they can earn those commissions for the referrals
Many of them also have arrangements with brokers, exchanges, or prop firms, where they profit from their users’ losses.
Every signal seller never disclose their trading history and never intended to trade on hyperliquid where we can track their on chain activity and see for ourselves about how well they are trading. The fake trading gurus has always been about selling courses and signal, never actually make their wealth through trading. If you're so confident in your signal that motivates you to sell it to other people, how about reimburse losses?
Most signal sellers playbook is simple. Give out signal, if things went shit, delete, put DYOR in every signal so you're free of the responsibility hence why it's scammy.
I completely agree.
That said, trading on Hyperliquid isn't necessarily solid proof either. If wallets aren't consistently linked and the setup isn't transparent, people can hedge across multiple wallets and only reveal the one that had a good run.
I have no problem with selling signals as long as there's a verifiable track record. And even the best traders have drawdowns, so "DYOR" can also simply mean that no trader is right all the time.
It's true that some of these guys are not as good as they may seems like, but I believe that they are all doing this to add to their earnings, because you cannot be winning all the time when trading, so you need other source of revenue to survive.
I agree with you, but there needs to be transparency. If you're selling signals, people should be able to verify your track record and see the full picture, including the losses
If you are certain that you will make money from it, why not take a loan? Why sell something that you can’t give guarantee
Because being confident in your strategy doesn't mean you can guarantee a fixed return every month. Trading has drawdowns and variable returns, while a loan has fixed obligations.
A profitable trader can also have limited personal capital. Selling signals can simply be a way to scale income without taking on debt.
The person selling the signal loses nothing if the signal don’t work, but the person buy will lose multiple times. You don’t expect me to ask someone selling signal if they can trade, the obvious answer they will tell me is yes, and I won’t have to ask further questions. People should ask their questions, it’s left for the person selling signals to convince them.
Exactly. If there is a verifiable track record with all trades included, including the losses, people don't need to ask much.
They can simply look at the performance and decide for themselves whether they want to follow that trader or not. No claims or promises are needed. The track record speaks for itself.
