If a trader wanted to prove that they were profitable, would they have have to provide brokerage statements showing individual trades, or just daily account value? Also, how would the 'auditor' know the statements weren't fake, given that many are only delivered as PDF documents, which can be changed or even concocted from scratch?
In addition to account statements, "backers" may ask to see your tax returns for the past several years in order to confirm and verify income from trading. If you balk at that request, you can forget abot the "backing".
Anything that you have absolutely no control over Personally, I would not trust broker statements from you. With Photoshop, anything can be manipulated. But you could get independent auditiing. Depending on what & how you trade, places like: -Timertrac.com -FuturesTruth.com -Collective2.com -Brokers Striker Securities and Attain Capital will publish the results of your system - Robbins World Cup championship - pro-trading-profits.com - theta research - timerdigest.com - hulbert financial - etc. etc.
I think it would be usefull for you to say to who you want to prove that results. Fore friends, they'll trust your words, for relatives they'll trust a statement for outside investor (if you want to be a hedgie) then you need the full gear stuff from a CPA or some big shot accounting firm.
TraderZones nailed it Any accredited âexternalâ auditing firm (PricewaterhouseCoopers / Deloitte for example) â Itâs not really a big ordeal Itâll just cost you a few bucks and some time - and youâll become quite familiar with Sarbanes-Oxly :eek: Redneck
Thanks for the helpful replies. What I was really thinking for the audience were the skeptics on ET who, on seeing someone say they are profitable, show complete disbelief until they see 'audited' results. I am guessing that would be something less than scrutiny of all your last few years' earnings and something more than a couple of screenshots (which can easily be photoshopped). I don't imagine there are many accounting firms that offer a special 'ET Skeptic Blaster' service