How crypto trading signals work
A signal is somebody's trade, written down before anyone knows how it ends. This is what one contains, how it resolves, and how to tell a real track record from a decorated one.
Anybody can say they called the top. They can say it on Monday about Sunday, and there is no way to check.
A trading signal is the version of that claim that can be checked, because it commits to numbers before the outcome exists. It names the price it enters at, the price at which it admits it was wrong, and the price at which it takes the money. Once those three numbers are published, the trader has no say in what happens next. The market decides, and the result is whatever it is.
What a signal has to contain
A signal that leaves anything out cannot be judged. A complete one carries six things:
- Pair — what is being traded. BTCUSDT, ETHUSDT, XRPUSDT.
- Direction — long if it expects the price to rise, short if it expects a fall.
- Type — market, limit or stop. How the trade begins.
- Entry — the price the position opens at.
- Stop loss — the price at which the idea is wrong.
- Take profit — the price at which it is right.
If a signal has no stop loss, it isn't a signal. It's an opinion with a chart attached.
Market, limit and stop
Three ways a trade can begin, and the difference matters when you're judging somebody else's record.
- Market — starts immediately, at whatever the price is right now. No entry price is needed; it's live the second it's published.
- Limit — waits for the price to come down (or up) to a level the trader names. Until price reaches it, nothing has happened and the signal sits pending.
- Stop — starts when price breaks through a level. Used when you want the market to confirm a move is underway rather than trying to catch it early.
A trader posting market orders is committing instantly, in public, with no room to be lucky about the entry. Limit orders are a legitimate technique, but they also mean a signal can sit unfilled for days and quietly never count.
Stop loss and take profit decide the outcome — not the trader
Stop loss (SL) is the price where the trade is recorded as a loss. Take profit (TP) is where it is recorded as a win. Both are set before the trade begins, and on a properly run platform neither can be moved afterwards.
That ordering is the entire point. Because both prices are fixed in advance, nobody gets to decide after the fact whether a trade “basically worked”. Price reaches one level or the other, and that is the result.
How a signal resolves
- Pending — published and waiting for its entry price. Limit and stop signals only; a market signal never sits here.
- Active — running. Entry has been hit, neither the stop nor the target has.
- Win — price reached take profit first.
- Loss — price reached stop loss first.
On TradeSmart these transitions happen on their own. A service watches live Binance prices around the clock and moves each signal itself, which means no trader ever marks their own homework.
Win rate, and what it doesn't tell you
Win rate is the number everyone quotes. It is the share of finished signals that hit their target:
Seven wins and three losses is 70%. Only finished signals count — pending and active ones are left out, because they don't have a result yet.
Now the part almost nobody mentions. A win rate on its own is close to meaningless, because it says nothing about how much was won or lost each time. Two traders:
| Trader | Win rate | Wins | Loses | Over 10 trades |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 70% | $1 | $3 | −$2 |
| B | 40% | $3 | $1 | +$6 |
The trader with the worse win rate makes money and the one with the better win rate loses it. So before you follow anyone's percentage, look at the distance from their entry to their stop, and from their entry to their target. That ratio — risk against reward — is the other half of the number, and you can work it out from any signal here, because every entry, stop and target is published.
The second thing to check is how many trades the percentage rests on. A 100% win rate across four signals is four signals. It tells you nothing at all yet.
A track record only counts if it can't be edited
This is the question worth asking of anyone selling signals, and it is rarely answered.
Imagine a signal could be deleted after it went live. The losing trades quietly disappear. The winners stay. Within a month the published win rate is 80% and it is completely fictional — not because anybody lied, but because the record was editable and losses are unpleasant to look at.
A number you can change afterwards isn't a track record. It's a brochure.
On TradeSmart a signal can be edited or deleted only while it is still pending — while it has no result and has never been live. The moment it goes active it locks permanently, for everyone, including us. Every trader's real record stays visible to every member: the wins, the losses, and the ones still running.
That's why our numbers look the way they do rather than the way we would prefer them to.
Where to see it
The Signal Terminal is free. No card, no payment, no trial that runs out. Inside, you can browse every signal every trader has posted, filter by win rate, status or pair, follow the traders whose records you rate — and publish your own, under the same rules as everybody else.