How to Follow a Verified Trader on GIOAT

For many beginners, the hardest part of trading isn't the market itself. It's knowing who to learn from.

The internet is full of "experts" in stocks and crypto, and few of them can show a record you can check. On GIOAT, a trader's return is calculated from their connected brokerage account, so you can check their return for this year before you pay them anything.

Following a trader on GIOAT means subscribing to them. You pay the monthly price they set (or nothing, if they set it to $0). In return you can see their holdings and recent trades, and you receive the messages they send to followers. GIOAT does not copy trades into your account, does not send automatic alerts when a trader trades, and cannot place trades at all, because brokerage connections are read-only. What you do with what you see is up to you, in your own brokerage.

Here is the process, step by step.

1. Find a trader

You have two ways in.

• The public leaderboard. The verified leaderboard needs no account. It lists each trader's alias, verified return, win rate, number of trades this year and monthly price, ranked by verified return for this year, or since the trader connected if that was later.
• Find Traders. Once you're signed in, the Find Traders tab on your dashboard lets you search by name or alias (at least two characters). Search covers every user, including people who never connected a brokerage, so look for the "Brokerage Connected" label in the results.

The signed-in leaderboard on your dashboard uses the same ranking and shows each trader's price, win rate and a Crypto, Stock or Mixed tag. You can sort it by return, price or win rate.

Read the numbers with their limits in mind. A trader who connected in July is ranked on a few months, while a trader with a full year of data is ranked on twelve. Every connected trader is listed, so being on the board says nothing about skill. Win rate counts closed trades only, over all the history GIOAT has synced, so a losing position the trader is still holding doesn't lower it. And a trader with only one day of data shows 0.00%.

2. Open the profile

Sign in, then click a trader's alias to open their profile. Before you follow, you'll see:

• Their verified return, labelled YTD TWR (time-weighted return)
• Their last trade: the most recent stock buy compared with today's price. It's an unrealized figure for a position that may still be open. Option trades are skipped, and it reads +0.00% when the latest stock trade was a sale.
• How many positions they hold
• A return chart with 1W, 1M, 3M, YTD, 1Y and 2Y views
• "Member since", which is when they created their GIOAT account, not when they connected their brokerage

The holdings and the trade list stay locked until you follow. One tip: if the chart's history starts partway through this year, the YTD figure covers only that stretch.

3. Fund your wallet and click Follow Trader

Following happens on the website. The iOS and Android apps don't offer it, though if you already follow a trader, their portfolio shows in the app as usual.

Paid follows are charged to your GIOAT wallet, which you top up by card on the website. If the wallet doesn't hold enough, the follow won't go through.

On the trader's profile, click "Follow Trader". A confirmation window shows:

• the monthly fee and a note that it's charged from your wallet
• your current wallet balance and your balance after paying
• a reminder that the subscription renews automatically
• a due-diligence warning that past performance doesn't predict future results

Confirm with "Subscribe & Pay" or, for a free trader, "Follow for Free".

4. How billing works

• Price: each trader sets their own, from $0 to $1,000 a month. Of each payment, 80% goes to the trader and 20% to GIOAT.
• Cycle: each payment covers 30 days.
• Renewal: renewals run at midnight Mountain time. When your period is up, GIOAT charges your wallet if the balance covers the fee. If you've turned on auto-recharge, it can top the wallet up first. If the money isn't there, the subscription ends. Free follows extend by 30 days on their own.
• Reminders: if your wallet won't cover the next charge, you get a reminder about a week before renewal and another within two days of it.
• Unfollowing: click "Following" on the profile to unfollow. You keep access until the period you paid for ends, and it won't renew. If you change your mind before then, following again doesn't charge you a second time.

5. What you get after following

• Holdings: each position with its percentage of the account, plus a donut chart. You see percentages, not dollar amounts, listed per holding rather than grouped by asset class.
• Recent trades: the latest 10, with symbol (plus option type, strike and expiry for options), side, price and date. There's no share quantity and no time of day.
• Broadcasts: messages the trader writes to followers. They arrive in your GIOAT inbox, by email and as a push notification. You can block or report a sender.

Know what you don't get, too. There are no automatic alerts when the trader buys or sells, and nothing is copied into your account. To see what changed, open the profile. Numbers refresh about once an hour, so check the trade date before acting on anything.

Do the break-even math before you pay

A subscription has to pay for itself before it does you any good. The quick test: multiply the monthly fee by 12, then divide by the amount of money you'll actually put to work on what you learn.

Take the middle row. At $40 a month on a $5,000 account, you need a 9.6% yearly return from what you learn just to cover the fee. If the trader's verified return this year is 7%, even matching them trade for trade wouldn't pay for the subscription, and you won't match them exactly: you see their trades after they happen, at different prices and sizes. On a $20,000 account the same fee needs 2.4%, a much lower bar.

If you follow more than one trader, add the fees together before you run the numbers. And if you're paying mainly to learn, treat the fee as a course budget and decide in advance how many months you'll give it.

Before you follow: a checklist

1. Check the period. Does the return cover the full year or only the months since the trader connected?
2. Look at the chart as well as the number. Find the deepest drop and ask whether you could have sat through it.
3. Read the win rate next to the trade count. A high win rate on a handful of trades tells you little, and open losing positions don't count against it.
4. Remember that the last-trade figure is an open position marked to today's price.
5. Run the break-even math for your own account size.
6. Make sure your wallet will cover the renewal, or decide now to let it lapse.
7. Set a review date before the second renewal and decide then whether it's worth another month.
8. Know what you're buying: a view of holdings and the latest trades, plus whatever the trader chooses to write.

Learn first, act second

It's tempting to buy whatever a trader you follow holds. Before you act on anything you see, ask yourself:

• Does this fit my own risk tolerance?
• Do I understand the asset they're trading?
• Does this align with my long-term investing goals?
• Am I prepared for potential losses as well as gains?

A few rules help: never risk money you can't afford to lose, start small and scale up later, and always know what you're trading and why. Treat what you see on a trader's profile as input to your own decisions.

Where to start

Check what following costs on the pricing page, and when you're ready, create an account to follow a trader from the website. For warning signs to look for before you act on anyone's trades, read the copy trading trap.