Trading journal
A channel's highlight reel is not a track record. Here is how to rebuild the real one from the calls themselves, including the ones nobody talks about any more.
If you follow a Telegram or Discord channel for crypto or forex calls, you have probably asked whether the person behind it is actually any good. Learning how to check a trading signals track record comes down to one idea: the channel’s own feed is not a record, it is a selection. To verify a trading signal provider you have to rebuild the full list of calls yourself, including the losing ones and the ones that quietly never closed, and then do some simple arithmetic on it.
This guide walks through what to log, which numbers to compute, and where the usual distortions hide. None of it needs a paid tool. A spreadsheet works, and so does a trading journal app. Nothing here is investment advice, and nothing here is about any particular channel.
Most channels are not lying outright. The problem is that the person posting the results also chooses which results to post, and that choice bends the picture in predictable ways.
Selection bias is when the sample you see is not the sample that happened. In a signal channel it usually looks like this:
Survivorship bias works the same way at the level of whole channels. You hear about the channels that had a good run, not the ones that stopped posting. Neither bias needs anyone to fake anything. It is enough that good news is louder than bad news.
A record you can check has three properties: every call is there, each call has a timestamp from when it was posted, and each call has a clear ending (target, stop, manual exit or still open). If a channel publishes that itself, good. If it does not, your own log, started on the day you joined, is the only version you can trust.
Start logging today, not after you decide to follow someone. The point is to capture calls before you know how they end, so that the outcome cannot influence what gets written down.
For every call, write down:
If you entered the trade, also record your own fills, fees and funding. Your result and the trader’s result are different numbers, and you want both.
This is the part almost everyone skips. A call that has been open for four months is not neutral. Either it is losing and nobody has admitted it, or it is so far from target that it is unlikely to matter. Either way, leaving it out of the record makes the trader look better than the calls actually were.
A stated percentage and the percentage implied by the posted prices are often not the same number, and the difference is not always dishonest. It is still worth knowing.
Take the entry price from the original call and the exit price from the result post, and compute the move yourself. A simple illustration with made-up numbers:
So where does +140% come from? Usually from one of these:
None of these is necessarily a lie. But a channel that always reports on the most flattering basis is giving you a number you cannot reproduce.
For each call it helps to keep three separate figures side by side:
| Figure | Where it comes from | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Claimed in the channel | The trader’s own result post | The marketing number |
| His own prices imply | His posted entry and exit | What the call was actually worth on his own terms |
| You made | Your fills, fees and funding | What your money did |
These are three different bases, so don’t add them together. When the first number is regularly much bigger than the second, you have learned something about how the channel reports.
Win rate is the headline number every channel likes, and it is also the easiest to distort.
Say you logged 18 calls from one channel. Twelve of them closed, and nine of those were winners. Six are still open months later, all of them underwater.
Same channel, same calls. The first number is the one you will see in a recap post. The second is closer to what following every call would have felt like. Whenever the two numbers are far apart, the stalled calls are carrying the gap.
You need a rule for when an open call counts as stalled. Common choices are 30, 60, 90 or 180 days with no exit. A scalping channel deserves a short threshold; a swing-trading channel can have a longer one. What matters is that you choose it before looking at the results and apply it the same way to every source.
Holding time is the quiet tell. Compute the median number of days a winning call stayed open, and the same for losing and stalled calls.
A pattern to watch for: winners are closed quickly and announced, while losers and stalled calls stay open far longer. That is consistent with “take profits fast, never admit a loss”, which inflates the win rate without improving results. A median is better than an average here, because one call held for 300 days would wreck an average.
The last check answers the question you actually care about: if you had put the same amount into every call, in order, what would have happened?
Use one fixed virtual stake, for example $100 per call, and apply each call’s result from its own prices. Plot the running total in date order. A fixed stake removes position sizing from the picture, so two channels can be compared on the calls alone.
What the curve shows that a win rate hides:
If you entered some calls and skipped others, compare: how many winners did you miss, how many losers did you avoid, and how does your own result compare with blind following? Sometimes the channel is fine and the problem is which calls you picked. Sometimes it is the other way round.
Some warning signs show up before you have enough calls to compute anything:
If you see the last few, you don’t need a scorecard. Leave.
A spreadsheet can do everything above. You will need columns for every field in Step 1, formulas for the implied percentage, a status column with a stalled rule, and a chart for the fixed-stake curve. It works, as long as you keep it up and the formulas stay right when rows are added. If you already keep your spending in sheets, our comparison of a budget spreadsheet and an expense tracker app covers the same trade-off.
Try it in MoneyFlux: the Positions tab is a trading journal with a trader scorecard built in. Log a trader’s calls (or import your existing sheet as CSV), and the scorecard shows “Claimed in the channel”, “His own prices imply” and “You made” side by side, the win rate counted both ways, median hold for winners vs losers and stalled calls, and a $100-per-call curve. Positions is part of Premium.
The Positions feature in MoneyFlux does the arithmetic from Steps 2 to 5 on your phone, from the numbers you type in. A few honest limits:
Your records sync to your own private iCloud, where only you can read them. If you also hold crypto outside of trading, it fits alongside your cards and cash as described in tracking cards, cash and crypto in one place.
After 30 or 40 logged calls you will have something no recap post gives you: every call, its real result on the trader’s own prices, the calls that never closed, and what your money did. That may confirm the channel is worth following. It may show the opposite. Either way, the decision is based on the full record rather than the highlights, and that decision stays yours.
Log every call with its date, entry, stop and target the moment it is posted, then record how each one actually ended. After a few dozen calls, compute the win rate with stalled calls included and a fixed-stake result across all of them.
Some are run in good faith and some are scams, and a channel's own posts cannot tell you which. The only evidence that counts is a complete record of calls, which you usually have to keep yourself.
A call that is still open long after it should have resolved, with no exit posted. A common rule is to treat anything open longer than 30, 60, 90 or 180 days as a loss when you score the source.
No. MoneyFlux has no live price feed and does not read Telegram or exchanges. You type in the calls and the fills, or import them from a CSV spreadsheet, and the scorecard is computed from what you entered.
No. This article and the MoneyFlux scorecard describe how to keep records and do arithmetic on them. Whether to follow any trader is your decision.
