How do you verify a trading bot's track record?
The verification checklist
The core test is simple: could the vendor have fabricated this after the fact? Screenshots fail that test instantly. Backtests fail it by construction — they are simulations tuned with hindsight. Even live results fail it when the vendor only shows you selected windows.
What passes: a tape. A continuously published journal, updated as decisions happen, with quiet days and losing entries printed in the same font as the good ones. We publish one for our own desk — every cycle, every review, every day — precisely so buyers have something to check before they believe a word we say.
- Continuity: the record covers every day since it started, with no unexplained gaps.
- Timestamps: entries appear as they happen, not batched after outcomes are known.
- Completeness: quiet days and losing days are printed, not edited out.
- Independence: the history is committed somewhere the vendor cannot silently rewrite, like a public git history.
Questions that expose a fake record
Ask where the losing days are — every real strategy has them, and a record without them has been curated. Ask to see the specific dates when nothing happened; discipline shows up as boring entries, and fabricated records rarely bother to fake boredom.
Ask how you could verify an entry independently: does the journal reference real quotes, real timestamps, real broker review checks? And ask what the record looked like before you asked — archives, commit histories, and third-party caches make honest vendors easy to confirm and dishonest ones easy to catch.
First-party data — from our own desk
More questions people ask
Are backtests worthless?
Not worthless — they are how strategies get designed. But a backtest is a simulation shaped with hindsight, so it is evidence about the design process, never proof of live behavior.
What about verified P&L services?
Third-party verification helps, but check what is actually verified: some services only confirm that a screenshot matches an account statement for a chosen window, which still allows cherry-picking the window.
Why do you publish your own desk's quiet days?
Because a tape that skips boring days is a highlight reel. Our daily pages print every cycle, including the many days where the desk reviewed setups and placed nothing — that restraint is part of the record.
Regulator resources and sources
Independent, official reading — not affiliated with EB28:
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