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Rules for Posting Trades on Social Media

Sharing your trading can be motivating, but it can also become a trap. Public posts create pressure, ego, and sometimes dishonesty.

Here are guidelines for staying healthy.

1. Be honest. Post losses along with wins. If you show only profits, you mislead others and yourself.

2. Don't post live trades for validation. Waiting for likes while a trade is open can affect your decisions.

3. Avoid guarantees. Never claim you can predict outcomes or promise returns.

4. Label demo vs live. Mixing them misleads people.

5. Include risk information. Mention stop loss, position size, and the possibility of losing.

6. Don't sell what you don't have. Avoid offering paid signals or mentorship if you lack a long, verifiable track record.

7. Avoid pressuring followers. No urgency tactics like "last chance to join."

8. Protect your privacy. Don't share account numbers, logins, or personal details.

9. Follow platform rules and local laws. Financial promotion is regulated in many places.

10. Separate posting from trading. Take screenshots after the trade, not during.

Trust builds slowly and breaks quickly. An honest educator with modest claims is more valuable than a flashy one whose results can't be checked.

Post in a way you'd be proud of in five years.

Rule 4 needs one more category these days: prop accounts. Most evaluation accounts, and at many firms the funded stage too, run on simulated capital, with the firm paying out based on that performance. That's fine, but a screenshot from a "funded $100k" account is not a live $100k trade, and the people reading it usually don't know the difference. I'd label it the same way as demo, with the firm's name if you're comfortable sharing it.

On honesty more generally, a monthly statement exported from the broker beats any number of screenshots, because it shows every trade including the ones you'd rather forget. If someone posts a run of wins but never a statement, that tells you most of what you need to know.

Number 10 is underrated. I tried posting entries live once, years ago, and caught myself holding a trade longer than planned because I'd announced the target. Screenshots after the close only, since then.

Fairman wrote: Don't post live trades for validation. Waiting for likes while a trade is open can affect your decisions.

Point 2 is the one I've seen do the most damage, particularly around releases. Someone posts a position just before a central bank decision with a confident comment, the decision goes the other way, and instead of closing the trade they hold it because closing would mean admitting the call was wrong in public. The loss gets bigger because the audience is watching.

Point 9 deserves a note too. In the UK and EU, posting trade calls with a link to a broker or a paid group can count as a financial promotion, and the regulators have been taking influencer activity seriously in recent years. People sometimes don't realise that a casual post with an affiliate link is covered.

Point 10 is the simplest fix of all. Screenshots after the trade is closed remove most of the problems on the list.