The mission
Ever since I started kinfo a few years back the mission has been two-fold, one has always been to create a sustainable business, providing enough value to users that they are willing to pay for the service so I can make a living and pay my bills.
The other is about solving a major problem in the trading community. Fake gurus who market themselves as experts with extraordinary returns and sell expensive courses and services to beginners, when in fact they don´t have any verifiable track record, and sometimes they don´t even trade at all.
This has been going on for years and both US and International law enforcement can´t keep up with the number of scams. They are practically free to roam around without suffering any consequences.
While laws & regulations would be a preferred solution to this problem it won´t likely happen in the foreseeable future.
Many credible traders have presented me with the thought that popped up in my head as well multiple times before starting kinfo.
What if there was a service where you could link your broker to provide a 100% authentic trading performance record, and making sure that the results can´t be faked.
Now, a few years later, kinfo is exactly that. You can link most popular brokers in the US and it will provide a 100% verified performance record. I get the question from time to time if these numbers can be faked, the short answer is that they can´t. Over the years a few bugs have been found and corrected.
The last one was related to trading on an Interactive Brokers account with multiple base currencies which would skew the metrics. Not easily abused since you would have to make all your losing trades in USD and all your profitable trades in, let’s say, Japanese Yen, but still, the numbers weren´t accurate. Once found and reported, this bug was corrected the next day.
Building trust
Creating the necessary tech with broker integrations, user interfaces, and all that has it´s challenges but it´s actually easy peasy pie compared to building trust.
It´s called building trust but it´s not something you can build yourself, it´s something that gets built once you earned it. And to earn it as a credible source for trade verification, it has to be perfect.
Building trust is really a marathon, for me, the first step was getting in touch with some well-known traders in the day trading community. Some of them already went through great efforts to show proof of their performance.
Many traders still look at kinfo with doubt, though thanks to a number of helpful traders that necessary trust exists, once users see who is on the platform and what people say about kinfo.
A word of thanks
There are a number of helpful traders with established names in the trading community that contributed to spreading the word about kinfo and also establishing the necessary trust.
One of the first ones was Steven Dux. Steven has always been very transparent and before using kinfo went as far as having his account audited by an external firm and posting his account statements on Twitter and having his broker respond with verification that they are accurate.
Another person I have a lot to thank for is David (Reverselong) who runs the Friendly Bear Podcast, he has been s spokesperson for kinfo and is also one of the top traders on the leaderboard.
Matthew Owens (Triforce trader) is the person that been with me and supported kinfo the longest, I would say I have him to thank for getting in touch with everyone else. Matthew has been of tremendous help in establishing trust with other traders and has been a great ballpark when trying out new features and understanding what´s important for the day trading community. Since Matti is an algo trader and role model for many in the algo trading community, kinfo has established a name for itself in that niche of niches as well.
Talking about niches, kinfo is now a well-established name in the Latin Day Trading Community, all thanks to the tremendous support from Eduardo (Edu Trades) who runs a day trading focus room where all communication is in Spanish. Eduardo is also one of the top traders on the leaderboard, a role model for the Latin day trading community as well as everyone else.
Broker integration has always been a hassle, I would never have managed to integrate some of them without help from Tim Grittani and James (Stockwonk), two fantastic traders who are also on top of the kinfo leaderboard.
I have many more traders to thank so if you are not mentioned, know that you are not forgotten!
Spreading the word
Michael Goode really lives up to his name! He is not only good but one of the best! He is a long-time user and recently put out a tweet asking traders to provide proof if they brag about their performance or sell services.
The tweet got a lot of buzz and the discussion that followed was very helpful in establishing kinfo as a trustworthy source of verified trading performance.
The question still stands, why doesn´t everyone who provide trading services use kinfo?
The answer is not a simple one and there are multiple reasons to why traders don´t disclose their performance.
One thing is true though, kinfo has gone from a small unknown app to an established platform, trusted and referred to by many as the go-to source for verified performance.
A recent post on reddit shows that people really want to solve this problem and kinfo may just be the solution they are looking for.
Reddit is special since one of it´s core features is anonymity and user privacy, but profiles can be very public and influence the decision of thousands of people.
User integrity and privacy have always been of top priority and necessary to build the needed trust to become a go-to resource for verified trading performance.
You can be anonymous on kinfo but the real identity may be known to kinfo staff, due to integration or if you out in your credit card. Kinfo is still a real company with HQ in Stockholm, Sweden. Users privacy are covered by swedish and EU law including recent additions with tight regulations and high fees with GDPR.
Reddit users should feel that their privacy is as well protected on kinfo as on Reddit.
The most common question on this topic can be found in the FAQ
What about the furus?
The furus will never join kinfo, that´s for sure. But as kinfo becomes more established and known, users will continue to call furus out if they suspect that they provide false records, ask them to at least put one account on kinfo to show consistent profits.
Some real and credible traders have reached out to me and raised various concerns about joining. They wanted to join but have had concerns about showing trades directly the day after or showing too much transaction info and are afraid that someone may reverse engineer their strategy.
These cases are often easy to solve and there are a couple of features available by request to traders who provides services or have a huge following.
If you are one of them, reach out to me and we´ll figure things out!
The problem with furus will not go away any time soon but with kinfo, the trader community has a tool in the toolbox to call any furu out and ask them to show proof.
What´s next
There are a number of features on the roadmap ahead, especially for PRO users.
Going forward I will continue to focus on improving the platform, broker integration and adding features based on user feedback.
I love getting feedback from users so if you have anything to say, positive, negative or ideas around how I can make kinfo better, please reach out to me.
The best place to reach me is the kinfo discord channel.
Connect here: Kinfo Discord
You can use the comment section below or send an email to karl [at] kinfo.com
Good luck with your trading!
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