How It Works

Investor Strides is built for long-term active investors who want to build a career-grade track record — analysts, portfolio managers, or aspiring new professionals who make deliberate, research-driven decisions and want verifiable proof of it.

It is not a brokerage, a trading simulator, or a social network — and it is not designed for short-term trading strategies. The focus is on credibility, giving ambitious investors a way to build a track record that institutions and employers can trust.

This is central to what makes an Investor Strides track record credible.

Closed and inactive portfolios

If you close a portfolio or stop using it, its historical track record is preserved in full. Closed portfolios retain their complete performance history. This permanence is by design — a track record only means something if it cannot be quietly erased.

Once you have built a track record, you can generate a verified performance report for any date range you choose. Reports are delivered as an Excel file and include end-of-period holdings, NAV history, executed order history, and performance metrics for the selected period.

Each new portfolio begins a new track record from the date it is created. Performance does not carry over between portfolios. You are in full control of who you share your performance with.

Your portfolio is valued daily using official end-of-day market prices. Holdings, cash, and performance metrics update automatically after each market close. Portfolio value is cash plus the value of every position. A short position counts at its value as described under Short Positions, never as a negative market value.

Base currency and FX

All portfolios are tracked and reported in USD. International holdings are converted using official end-of-day FX rates for the relevant date. Performance is always shown in USD.

You can invest in common stocks only. No options, no crypto, no ETFs. The platform is designed to capture security selection and portfolio management skills.

We currently support U.S. equities only, with plans to expand into major developed and emerging markets over time.

Coverage expands only when market data quality, corporate action handling, and execution methodology meet platform standards. These markets are on our roadmap:

Current gaps:

On Investor Strides a short is fully collateralized: it spends cash to open, exactly like a buy, and its loss is capped at the cash you commit. Real-world shorts carry unbounded loss, borrow costs, and margin. This model does not, and the differences are stated below.

Opting in

Short positions are off by default. You turn them on in your account settings. The setting controls only whether new Short orders are accepted.

Opening a short

Opening a short debits cash by shares times the closing price, the same as a buy. Shorting 100,000 shares at a close of $50 commits $5,000,000. That amount is the position's collateral. Because every position, long or short, is paid for in full, the combined value of your positions never exceeds your portfolio value and cash never goes negative. There is no borrow cost, no locate requirement, and no hard-to-borrow list.

Adding to an open short averages your cost across the old and new shares, the same as adding to a long.

How a short is valued

A short's value is its collateral plus its profit or loss, and it cannot fall below zero. Its return is the exact mirror of a long's. A long bought at $50 and marked at $47 is down 6 percent; a short opened at $50 and marked at $47 is up 6 percent. The same short, 100,000 shares at $50 with $5,000,000 committed:

Positions are valued at the official close in the stock's own currency, then converted to USD at the official end-of-day FX rate.

Covering

Covering closes some or all of a short. A cover credits cash with the position's value at that close; a partial cover credits the proportional share. Proceeds are the position's value, not shares times price. Covering the short above at a close of $44 credits $5,600,000: the $5,000,000 committed plus a $600,000 gain.

The maximum loss and the buy-in

You can lose the capital you commit to a short, and no more. When a short's value reaches zero at an official close, the platform covers it for you for no proceeds. This is a buy-in. The position closes with a return of −100 percent. The capital committed is lost and nothing else is touched: a buy-in never reaches cash or any other position, and two shorts that trigger on the same day are bought in independently.

• A real short's loss is unbounded. The cap is the one place this model departs from a real short. When a stock gaps through the buy-in price, the loss beyond the capital committed is not booked to your portfolio. The unbooked amount is recorded on the closing fill, so the record discloses it. The same applies if you cover on a close at which the value is already zero: the cover credits nothing and carries the disclosure.
• Buy-ins are system orders. They appear in your history labelled as such and are as permanent as any other fill.

Dividends on a short

A short owes the dividends the stock pays while it is open. On the ex-dividend date the dividend is charged against the position's value, not against cash, and is settled when the position closes. Dividends owed lower the buy-in price; they do not change the maximum loss. A short opened on the ex-date owes nothing for that date. A dividend large enough to take the position's value to zero triggers a buy-in that session.

What the record shows

Opens and covers are your fills. Buy-ins are system fills. All are permanent and none can be edited. Your order history and verified reports show every order by its intent: Buy, Sell, Short, or Cover, with buy-ins labelled as system events. A portfolio that never opens a short is long-only by what its record shows. Long-only is not a setting you declare.

The platform handles corporate actions automatically to ensure your track record reflects reality accurately.

The Analysis tab measures the decisions underneath the headline return. It provides quantitative insights into what you are great at, and what you keep getting wrong.

Definitions

• Return: a position's profit or loss in USD, divided by the average capital employed over the days it was held. Profit or loss is sale and delisting proceeds, dividends received, and the value of any shares still held at the latest close, less purchase cost.
• Win, loss, flat: a position is a win if its profit or loss is above zero, a loss if below, and flat if exactly zero.
• Hit rate: wins divided by wins plus losses. Flat positions are excluded.
• Size-based hit rate: the combined average weight of winning positions divided by the combined average weight of all winning and losing positions. It is higher than the plain hit rate when the losers were your smaller positions.
• Average weight: the mean of a position's share of portfolio value across the days it was held. Buying more or selling part of a position moves it naturally.
• Slugging: the mean return of winning positions divided by the mean return of losing positions.
• Turnover: the lesser of total purchases and total sales over the selected window, divided by average portfolio value over the window, annualized. This is the SEC mutual fund convention.
• Holding period: calendar days from the opening fill to the closing fill. Reported for closed positions only, because an open position's outcome is still interim.