Verify Your Public Trading Record Without Sharing a Password

Can you verify your Public trading track record without giving anyone your password? Yes. You link your Public account read-only through SnapTrade, and you type your credentials into Public's own sign-in screen, not into PickVesting. PickVesting never sees or stores a brokerage password. From that read-only link, PickVesting builds a public record out of your real account, computed nightly, with no screenshots and no manual entry.

This guide is for creators on Public who want proof that stands up to a sceptical reader. It covers what the link is, what read-only actually means, what ends up in your record, and what to check once it is live. Other supported brokerages link the same way, so the mechanism here is not specific to Public.

How the link works without a password

You never hand PickVesting your Public password. The connection runs through SnapTrade, which sends you to Public's own sign-in screen. You authenticate there, with the broker, and grant a read-only connection back. PickVesting receives permission to read, not your credentials.

A few details matter for the sceptics:

• You sign in on your broker's own screen. PickVesting never sees or stores a brokerage password.
• The connection secret that gets returned is sealed with AES-256-GCM before it is stored.
• You can revoke the connection at any time, from the PickVesting app or from Public directly.

If you want the full walkthrough of the connection layer, read SnapTrade 101: How a Read-Only Brokerage Connection Powers a Verified Record.

What "read-only" actually means

Read-only means the connection can read your history and holdings and nothing else. It cannot place trades, it cannot move money, and it cannot change account settings. This is the part most creators ask about first, and it is the part that should put you at ease before you link.

Put plainly:

If you want this spelled out in more depth, including the boundaries of what PickVesting can and cannot see, read Is Read-Only Brokerage Linking Safe? What PickVesting Can and Cannot See.

What your Public record will show

Your record covers the whole linked account, not a hand-picked slice. Every position is reconciled in: stocks, options and crypto, including option contracts that expired worthless. You cannot quietly leave out the trades that went against you, because the record is built from the account, not from what you choose to post.

From those positions, PickVesting computes metrics nightly from closed positions:

• Time-weighted return
• Win rate
• Max drawdown

Each is shown over 7 days, 30 days, 90 days and all time. And a figure never appears on its own. Every return is shown with how long the record has been verified and how many closed positions it covers, so a reader can tell a 400% week on four trades from a long record with hundreds. For the exact definitions, see How PickVesting Calculates Return, Win Rate, and Max Drawdown.

Two more properties worth knowing:

• Snapshots are append-only. A correction is a new row. Nothing already recorded gets rewritten.
• Disconnecting never erases history. If you revoke the link later, the record keeps everything up to that day and shows the gap after it. You cannot wipe a bad month by unplugging.

How to publish the public URL

Verification is free, permanently. You can link a brokerage and publish a verified record without paying anything, and you get a public record URL you can share anywhere. There is no fee to prove your account is real.

Once it is live, you keep posting where you already post. Creators keep publishing on X, YouTube, Discord and Whop, and link the record from there instead of posting screenshots. Your audience follows for free, and the record does the arguing for you. You can browse see how verified records look on Discover to see the format before you commit.

Selling access is optional and separate from verification. If you later sell VIP access, PickVesting keeps 15% of VIP revenue and the rest is paid out through Stripe. But none of that is required to have a verified public record. The full picture of proving a record and then monetising it is in How Trading Creators Prove Their Record and Monetise an Audience.

What to check after you link

After the link is live, confirm a few things before you send the URL to anyone.

1. Account count. Every profile states how many brokerage accounts are linked. If you trade across more than one account, an unlinked one shows up as a visible absence, not a secret. Decide whether you want that gap on display.
2. Position coverage. Check that your closed positions are reconciling in. The record covers the whole account, so what you see should match what you actually did.
3. The verified-for and position-count labels. Make sure your short records read honestly. A seven-day record with a handful of closed positions is exactly that, and the labels say so.
4. The seal on any ideas you publish. A green seal means a live brokerage link currently vouches for the position behind the idea. A yellow seal means a demo account, test data, or a lapsed connection, and the line next to the seal says which. If your link lapses, your ideas go yellow until you reconnect.

A note on ideas versus the record

Your record and your ideas are two different things, and it helps to keep them separate. The record is the whole-account history. An idea is a specific call, and on PickVesting an idea can only be published against a real position you actually hold. The position is the disclosure. The entry price comes from the brokerage fill, not from a text box.

There are guardrails on ideas worth knowing before you publish one. Ideas on very thin names, stocks under $300M market cap, under 20M shares of float, or under 500K average daily volume, are refused before they publish. And reducing a published position within 48 hours is flagged for review, with every sale after publication watched. This exists so that an idea cannot be a pump you quietly exit.

What this still does not prove

A verified record is proof of what happened in the linked accounts, and nothing more. Be clear with your audience about the limits.

• It says nothing about accounts you did not link. If you trade elsewhere, that activity is simply not in the record.
• It does not know a reader's suitability, position size, or taxes.
• It does not predict your next trade or any future result.
• It does not vouch for the quality of advice in a chat room.
• A follower's fill price differs from yours. PickVesting does not place trades for anyone and does not offer copy trading.

Proof of a real, whole-account history is a high bar, and most screenshots never clear it. But it is a record of the past, not a forecast. Say that plainly, and your record will be more persuasive for it.

Ready to start? You can link a brokerage and publish a verified record for free and share the URL from wherever your audience already is. The same read-only, through-SnapTrade flow works for Public and more, read-only via SnapTrade.

PickVesting is not an investment adviser and does not provide personalised investment advice. Past performance is not a prediction of future results.