How Trust Scores Help You Choose Who to Copy

A return figure tells you what happened to an account. A trust score tries to tell you something harder: whether the person behind the account behaves in a way that is likely to keep producing results you can rely on. The two measures answer different questions, and a copier needs both.

What goes into a score

A well-built trust score draws on several sources:

• Verified performance, taken from the broker account itself rather than from uploaded statements
• Consistency of risk: whether position sizes and drawdowns stay within the published rules
• Conduct: the record of disclosures, their accuracy, and any warnings or sanctions
• Longevity: how long the record is and how many market conditions it covers
• Integrity signals: whether the strategist does what they say, responds to copiers, and updates disclosures when the method changes

The score penalises behaviours that tend to precede blow-ups, such as rising size after losses, and rewards the dull habits that tend to precede durability.

What it cannot tell you

A score cannot predict returns. A high-trust strategist can have a losing year; a low-trust one can have a lucky quarter. A score also cannot see outside the platform: a strategist with a short record is unrated rather than bad, and an unrated participant should never be read as scoring zero. The score describes evidence, and the absence of evidence is not evidence of a problem.

Reading it with the record

Use the score as a filter and the record as the decision. First, set a minimum score below which you will not look further. Then, among those who pass, read the drawdown, the risk consistency, the holding time and the disclosure. Then size the copy to the drawdown. A high score with a drawdown you cannot tolerate is still the wrong choice for you.

Watching it change

Scores move. A falling score on a strategist you copy is worth a look even if returns are fine, because it means something in the conduct or consistency record has changed.

What to watch

Watch the components of the score rather than the headline number, the direction of change over the past few months, and the match between the score and your own reading of the record. When the two disagree, read the record again; the score may have seen something you missed, or it may be lagging something you can see.