How to Use GIOAT to Track Your Own Trading Progress

Not every trader joins a platform to build an audience.

Sometimes you just want to know whether you're improving, whether your strategy is working over time, and whether your wins are real progress or short-term luck. You want honest feedback from your own data, not opinions from group chats or the mood you're in after a good or bad trade.

GIOAT can do that job. Before you connect, though, know one thing: GIOAT has no private mode. Here's what becomes public, what stays on your own dashboard, and how to read the numbers you'll see there.

Know what's public before you connect

When you connect a brokerage, you're listed on the leaderboard, including the public leaderboard that anyone can open without logging in. Signed-in users can find you by searching your name or alias, and anyone with an account can follow you. There is no setting to hide from the leaderboard or to turn followers away.

New accounts start with a follow price of $1 a month. If you'd rather not charge anyone, set it to $0 under Settings, Follow Price. Followers then see your holdings and trades for free. If you want off the board entirely, the only option you have is to disconnect your brokerage, which also stops the tracking.

The profile and leaderboard pages show percentages, counts, trade prices and your monthly price. They don't display your account's dollar value or your profit in dollars.

Step one: connect your brokerage

You connect through SnapTrade's portal, where you log in to your broker. The connection is read-only, so GIOAT can read trades and balances but cannot place a trade. You can connect one brokerage at a time, and GIOAT tracks one account in it, which you choose. Connecting is currently free for a limited time (regularly $9.99 a month); the pricing page has the details.

From then on there is no manual entry. Trades, deposits, withdrawals and balances come from your broker and refresh about once an hour, so every trade in the tracked account, good or bad, becomes part of your record.

What your dashboard shows you

Your portfolio page is the fullest view of your own numbers. It has:

• Performance Overview: Simple Return, Realized P/L, Unrealized P/L, Win Rate with your count of wins and losses, Avg Gain/Trade, Total Invested (net cash deposited), Current Value and a breakdown of your trades.
• Verified Return card: your time-weighted return this year, with the starting and current account value.
• Return chart: 1W, 1M, 3M, YTD, 1Y and 2Y views, as far back as GIOAT has daily snapshots of your account.
• Holdings and trades: holdings in dollars, your last trade and your full trade history.

Read your verified return next to your simple return

These two numbers answer different questions, and they can be far apart.

The Verified Return is a time-weighted return (TWR). It measures how your trading did per dollar, with the deposits and withdrawals your broker reports taken out, so money you add isn't counted as a gain. It's the number the leaderboard ranks. The Simple Return divides your dollar profit or loss (realized plus unrealized) by the net cash you've deposited, across all the history GIOAT has synced. It treats a dollar you deposited last week the same as one that's been invested since January.

Here's an example. You start the year with $10,000. By June 30 it has grown to $12,000, a 20% gain. On July 1 you deposit another $10,000, so the account holds $22,000. The second half goes badly and you end December at $21,000.

The balance change is meaningless here because half the money was deposited. The Simple Return is low because the second-half loss hit twice as much money as the first-half gain. The TWR gives each half equal weight: +20%, then -4.5%. If you want to know whether your decisions are working, the TWR is the better guide. If you want to know how much money you've made relative to what you put in, look at the Simple Return. Both are correct; they measure different things.

GIOAT works this out day by day. For each day it takes the change in your account value, subtracts any deposit, and divides by the starting value plus half the deposit. Say you start at $10,000, deposit $1,000 on January 2 and end that day at $11,200: (11,200 - 10,000 - 1,000) ÷ (10,000 + 500) = +1.905%. If January 3 ends at $11,000, that day is -1.786%. Chained together, 1.01905 × 0.98214 - 1 = +0.085%, while the balance is up 10%.

Edge cases worth knowing

• Connecting mid-year: without a December 31 snapshot, your return runs from your first snapshot this year, even where a card says year to date. Your first day shows 0.00%.
• January 1: the headline number resets every year. The chart's 1Y and 2Y views can still show earlier history if GIOAT has it.
• Win rate: it counts closed trades only. If you've closed eight winners and two losers, it reads 80%, even if you're sitting on an open position that's down $1,500. That loss shows in your unrealized P/L and your return instead.
• Last trade: it's your most recent stock buy compared with today's price. Option trades are skipped, and it shows +0.00% when your latest stock trade was a sale.
• Timing: numbers refresh about hourly, so a trade from a few minutes ago may not show yet.

Switching accounts without losing your record

If you hold several accounts at your broker, such as a TFSA, an RRSP and a margin account, you can switch which one GIOAT tracks. You'll be asked to choose:

• Keep my track record: the old account's record closes on the day you switch and the new one starts that day. The two are linked by multiplying their returns: if the first account returned +8% and the new one returns +5% after the switch, your record shows 1.08 × 1.05 - 1 = +13.4%. History such as your trades and win rate spans both.
• Start fresh: earlier accounts are hidden from your public record. The data isn't deleted.

Either way, the new account's record begins at the switch, and nothing it did before then counts. Hover over the switch date on the return chart and a note marks it.

Questions to ask your own data

Review your dashboard every few weeks and work through these:

• Is my TWR climbing steadily on the chart, or does it come from one or two big days?
• How deep was my worst drop this year, and how long did it take to recover?
• Does my average gain per trade justify how often I trade?
• Which symbols keep showing up among my losing trades?
• Am I holding losing positions open to protect my win rate?

Your trade history is where patterns show. You might find that certain assets do better for you, or that a specific kind of trade tends to end in a loss. For the arithmetic behind drawdown and recovery, see how to evaluate stock performance like a pro.

Final thoughts: trade for yourself first

You don't need followers to be a serious trader. What you need is clarity, accountability and honest feedback from your own numbers, and a record fed by your broker gives you all three.

Just go in knowing that the record is public from the day you connect. Set your price to $0 if you don't want to charge anyone, and let the numbers build. When you're ready, sign up for GIOAT and connect your brokerage.