How to Read a Trader's Profile on GIOAT

A trader's profile on GIOAT puts a lot on one page: a header, three number cards, a return chart and, for followers, holdings and recent trades. This guide goes through each part in order: what the number is, how GIOAT works it out, who can see it, and what it can't tell you.

One limit up front. GIOAT doesn't calculate risk measures such as drawdown, volatility, a Sharpe ratio or a risk score. The page gives you the raw material to judge risk yourself, and the later sections show how.

Who sees what

The verified return is public. It's on the public leaderboard, and when someone shares a profile link, the link preview shows it. The rest of this guide describes the profile as you see it when signed in.

Part of the profile	Before you follow	After you follow
Header: alias, Brokerage Connected, tag, Member since	Yes	Yes
YTD TWR, Last Trade and Positions cards	Yes	Yes
Return chart, 1W to 2Y	Yes	Yes
Holdings with allocation %	No ("Portfolio locked")	Yes
Latest 10 trades	No	Yes

The header

Brokerage Connected appears when the trader has a brokerage connected right now. It confirms a current read-only connection and says nothing about how good the trader is.
Crypto, Stock or Mixed is worked out from the symbols the trader has traded: all crypto gives Crypto, no crypto gives Stock, a mix gives Mixed.
Member since is the date the GIOAT account was created, not the date the brokerage was connected. It doesn't tell you how long the record is. The chart does.

The YTD TWR card

This is the trader's time-weighted return (TWR), the same number the leaderboard ranks on. GIOAT records the account's total value, cash plus positions, each day, reads the deposits and withdrawals the broker reports, and removes those flows so new money can't pass as a gain.

Each day's return uses the Modified Dietz formula:

r = (closing value − previous value − flow) ÷ (previous value + 0.5 × flow)

The daily returns are then chained: TWR = (1 + r1) × (1 + r2) × ... − 1.

Worked example: a deposit

Say an account is worth $10,000 on December 31. On January 2 the trader deposits $1,000 and the account closes at $11,200. On January 3 there is no flow and it closes at $11,000.

January 2: (11,200 − 10,000 − 1,000) ÷ (10,000 + 500) = 200 ÷ 10,500 = +1.905%
January 3: (11,000 − 11,200) ÷ 11,200 = −1.786%
TWR: 1.01905 × 0.98214 − 1 = +0.085%

The balance went from $10,000 to $11,000, which looks like +10%. Almost all of that was the deposit, so the card would show +0.09%.

The "since connecting" caveat

The card is always labelled "Year to date". A true year-to-date figure needs a snapshot of the account from last December 31. If the trader connected this year there isn't one, so the number is the return since GIOAT's first snapshot of their account. A trader who connected on September 1 shows their return since September 1 under the same label as a trader with a full year behind them.

To tell which you're looking at, set the chart to YTD and see where the line starts. A shared profile's link preview also says "since" and a date when the figure isn't a full year. The number resets every January 1 and refreshes about hourly.

The Last Trade card

This card looks at the trader's most recent stock trade.

If it was a buy, the card shows how that buy is doing at today's price: (current price ÷ buy price − 1) × 100. Bought at $40 and now at $43, it reads +7.5%.
If it was a sell, the card reads +0.00%.
Option trades are skipped, and so are trades priced below 5% of the stock's current price, since those are likely option premiums.

So this is an unrealized figure for a single position, marked to today's price. It tells you nothing about trades the trader has already closed. A trader who mostly trades options may show a Last Trade figure from a stock buy made months ago. Treat it as one data point. One trade that is down doesn't mean much by itself.

The Positions card

This is a count of the holdings in the tracked account right now. Three positions and thirty positions suggest different styles, but the count says nothing about size: three positions could be 90% in one stock or a third each. For weights you need the holdings list, which is for followers.

The return chart

The chart plots the same time-weighted return over 1W, 1M, 3M, YTD, 1Y or 2Y. It covers only the days GIOAT has snapshots for, so a trader who connected two months ago shows about two months whichever button you press. If there's too little history, it says "Not enough data to display chart".

A dashed vertical line marks a date when the trader switched which account is tracked and chose "Keep my track record", which links the old and new accounts into one record. If they chose "Start fresh" instead, the earlier accounts are hidden from the public record and the chart starts at the switch.

Reading a drop off the chart

GIOAT doesn't compute drawdown, but you can estimate it. The chart shows cumulative return, so compare growth factors, not percentage points. Say the line peaks at +30% in April and falls to +4% in June. The drop is 1.04 ÷ 1.30 − 1 = −20%, not 26 points. A 20% drop needs a 25% gain to get back to the peak (1 ÷ 0.80 − 1 = 0.25).

What followers see: holdings

Following is the same as subscribing. The trader sets a price from $0 to $1,000 a month, paid from your GIOAT wallet every 30 days, with 80% going to the trader and 20% to GIOAT. Following is done on the website. Until you follow, this section reads "Portfolio locked".

Once you follow, you see each current holding's symbol, name and allocation, meaning its share of the portfolio, plus a donut chart. Allocation is per holding. It isn't grouped into stocks, ETFs or crypto, and there's no history of past allocations, only today's.

What allocation tells you is concentration. If one holding is 60% of the account, a 10% fall in that stock moves the whole account about 6% (0.60 × 10%). If a trader holds 67% QQQ and 26% SPY, that looks like two positions, but both funds own many of the same large US companies, so the portfolio is less spread out than the count suggests.

What followers see: recent trade history

Followers also get the trader's latest 10 trades: symbol (with type, strike and expiry for options), buy or sell, price and date. There's no quantity, no time of day and nothing older than the tenth trade.

Ten trades can still tell you a fair amount. Ten trades spread over a year suggests someone who holds; ten in one week suggests an active trader. A list full of puts on the same two tickers tells you the strategy depends on options. What the list can't show is size: a buy of 1 share and a buy of 1,000 shares look the same.

Win rate: on the leaderboard, not the profile

The profile doesn't show win rate. The leaderboard does, so it's worth knowing how it's counted:

Win rate = closed trades with a profit ÷ all closed trades × 100. Break-even trades count in the total.
For stocks, each sell closes a trade, measured against the average cost of the shares.
For options, a trade closes when a short position is bought back or the option expires.
It covers all the history GIOAT has synced for the account, not only this year.
Open positions don't count. A losing position the trader still holds doesn't lower the win rate, but it does lower the return.

Example: 10 closed trades, with 6 at a profit, 1 at break-even and 3 at a loss, give a 60% win rate.

A five-minute profile check

Check the period. Set the chart to YTD. Does it start on January 1 or later?
Find the worst stretch on the 1Y or YTD view and work out the drop from growth factors.
Read Last Trade as the current standing of one position.
Put win rate next to return. A high win rate with a weak return can mean small wins, large losses or losing positions still open.
If you follow, look at the largest holding's allocation and multiply it by a fall you think is plausible.
Compare the price with your account. Monthly price × 12 ÷ account size is the return you need just to cover it.

For lining up several traders at once, see how to compare traders using performance history. To start reading profiles yourself, create a free account.