Investing can be a solitary pursuit, but a number of new platforms are trying to make participating in the market more social. Social trading platforms enable investors and traders to share ideas, learn from one another, and help each other spot trading opportunities.
In this guide, we’ll explain everything you need to know about social trading and highlight five of the best social trading platforms available today.
What is a Social Trading Platform?
A social trading platform is simply any trading or investing platform that incorporates community or social sharing features. Often, these platforms enable traders and investors to talk directly with one another and automatically share information about their trades. Social engagement may be the sole purpose of these platforms or a subset of features within a broader trading or research platform.
Types of Social Trading Platforms
Broadly speaking, there are three main types of social trading platforms.
Trade sharing platforms are designed to help traders share information about their trades with the world. When you make a trade with these platforms, it’s automatically added to a feed or stream where other users can see it. Usually, these platforms allow you to add public notes about your trade and allow other users to comment on your trade.
Community platforms are designed to build groups of like-minded traders and investors. These can be very similar to traditional social media platforms or even exist as groups within traditional social media platforms. Community platforms also include trading-related forums, which may be associated with a stock research or analysis service.
Chat room platforms are typically designed for traders rather than investors. They are usually moderated by a professional trader and facilitate real-time conversation among traders in the chat room. Chat room platforms usually require a membership that includes access to a specific strategy or trade ideas, such that traders in the chat room are all focused on similar setups or stocks.
Best Social Trading Platforms
Let’s take a look at five of the best social trading platforms available today.
Public
Best for Investors
Public is a commission-free brokerage app that offers trading on stocks, ETFs, and cryptocurrencies. The app has several useful social features, including a feed where you can see what other investors are buying and selling. Users can comment on each other’s trades, create group chats with like-minded investors, and even share custom charts.
The app is free to use. A Premium subscription costs $10 per month and adds professional market research, but this is not required to use Public’s social investing features.
Kinfo
Best Social Trading Journal
Kinfo is a handy day trading journal with social features that help traders learn from each other. As with any trading journal, you can track your trades, add strategy notes, and monitor your profit and loss over time.
What makes Kinfo unique is that most of your journal data is public by default and so is the data of other traders using Kinfo. So, you can find top traders and see what strategies they’re using, how long they typically hold positions, their average profit per trade, and more. You can also follow traders and get alerts when they open new positions.
🏆 Top Rated Services 🏆
Our team has reviewed over 300 services. These are our favorites:|
📈 Best Day Trading Service Investors Underground 🎯 Best Stock Scanner Trade Ideas 📉 Best Stock Charts TradingView |
💰 Best Stock Picking Service Motley Fool 📱 Best Mobile Broker Webull 📊 Best for Stock Research Seeking Alpha |
Kinfo is free to use, but a Pro subscription that costs $19.95 per month offers more advanced trade reporting. You can also make your trade data private in Kinfo at any time.
Profit.ly
Best Social Trading Community
Profit.ly is a social trading community organized by Tim Sykes, a veteran penny stock trader and day trading guru. On this platform, traders can post when they open a trade and offer notes about their strategy and timeframe. When traders close a position, they can post their profit or loss and a recap of what went well or poorly. It can be somewhat difficult to copy other traders’ moves, but Profit.ly is excellent for monitoring what stocks or setups other traders are active in.
Profit.ly’s community is free to access, but you’ll need a subscription that starts at $29.95 per month to comment on trades or message other traders. For $74.95 per month, you can also get access to real-time penny stock trade alerts from Tim Sykes.
Investors Underground
Best Trading Chat Room
Investors Underground is an online trading chat room with more than 1,000 active day traders. You can come to the chat room prepared with a watchlist of momentum and swing trading setups that Investors Underground sends out each night. Throughout the day, you can see how the chat room’s moderators are trading and get notified about trade alerts and news. If you have questions about a trading setup, Investors Underground’s moderators are available to help.
Since Investors Underground provides daily support in the chat room, this social trading platform isn’t cheap. A membership costs $297 per month or $1,897 per year.
Twitter – Best Free Community
Social media platform Twitter isn’t designed as a trading service, but there’s an enormous community of traders and investors sharing ideas on this platform. Financial reporters often break news on Twitter, stock analysts chime in on discussions about the stocks they follow, and individual traders share tweets about their latest positions.
Twitter is free to use, which is a major benefit for traders and investors interested in trying social trading for the first time. You can usually find information about a specific company by searching the stock’s ticker symbol with a $ sign in front of it (for example, search $AAPL for tweets about Apple stock).
Best Free Community
Social media platform Twitter isn’t designed as a trading service, but there’s an enormous community of traders and investors sharing ideas on this platform. Financial reporters often break news on Twitter, stock analysts chime in on discussions about the stocks they follow, and individual traders share tweets about their latest positions.
Twitter is free to use, which is a major benefit for traders and investors interested in trying social trading for the first time. You can usually find information about a specific company by searching the stock’s ticker symbol with a $ sign in front of it (for example, search $AAPL for tweets about Apple stock).
🏆 Top Rated Services 🏆
Our team has reviewed over 300 services. These are our favorites:|
📈 Best Day Trading Service Investors Underground 🎯 Best Stock Scanner Trade Ideas 📉 Best Stock Charts TradingView |
💰 Best Stock Picking Service Motley Fool 📱 Best Mobile Broker Webull 📊 Best for Stock Research Seeking Alpha |
Social Trading Platforms – Caveats
While social trading platforms can be very helpful for some traders and investors, there are a few things you should keep in mind when using them. First, you should always be wary of advice you find on social trading platforms. Most platforms don’t require traders to verify their identity or their trading history, so it’s impossible to know if the people giving advice are experienced or not. Just because a social trading platform indicates that a trader is highly profitable doesn’t mean that’s true.
It’s also important to avoid copying other trades. This rarely works because you’re already behind the setup by the time you find out about a trade. Knowing what other traders are doing is more helpful for seeing what stocks are hot or what strategies work in current market conditions.
Finally, try not to let social trading platforms influence your decision-making too much. While it can be helpful to know what others think about a stock, you should always form your own trade plan or investment thesis. Opinions found on social trading platforms should be used as one source of information among many rather than as a guide to how to trade or invest.
Conclusion
Social trading platforms can offer a sense of community for traders and investors as well as serve as valuable sources of information. Trade sharing platforms like Public, Kinfo, and Profit.ly enable traders to see what stocks others are trading and why. Community platforms like Twitter enable investors to share information. Chat rooms like Investors Underground help traders generate ideas in real-time and ask questions throughout the trading day.
