What does it mean to 'follow' a top trader's positions? What you can see, and what you can't

What does it mean to "follow" a top trader's positions? What you can see, and what you can't

Viewing and alerts only, with no orders placed

"Following" a top trader's positions can mean two different things.

One is buying whenever that person buys. The other is watching what that person is holding.

Satoshi Note does the second. It gathers the positions of public accounts, shows them in one place, and sends an alert when a position flips or a large trade is detected. It does not place orders on your behalf.

So what can you learn just by watching, and what can't you?

This piece sets out the range and the limits of the follow feature with equal weight.

1. Following to buy and following to watch are different things

Copy trading usually means another person's orders are executed in your own account as well.

Satoshi Note has no such feature. If a trader you follow opens a position, nothing happens in your account.

It does three things instead. It gathers public accounts' positions by asset, it lets you collect the accounts you care about on one screen, and it tells you when a position changes.

The difference is not small. Because no order follows automatically, every judgment made from what you see stays with the person looking, from start to finish.

2. The top-100 total is not one person's choice

The asset screens of the Satoshi Index show the combined positions of the top 100 traders.

That total has one limit: many different judgments by different people are blended into a single number.

In the morning snapshot of November 2, the 7-day top group held HYPE positions from 106 long accounts and 60 short accounts. By account count, longs were far ahead.

By notional, though, longs were about $146 million and shorts about $245 million, a long share of 37.4%. More people were long, but more of the money was short.

The group is also not a fixed list. Its membership changes every hour with the performance ranking, so there is no guarantee that today's 100 are yesterday's 100.

Picking specific accounts to watch reduces both problems. The list stays fixed, and what each account holds can be seen separately.

3. What following looks like on screen

Trader profile screens in Satoshi Note have a Follow button. Pressing it changes the label to Following, and the profile shows how many people follow that account.

Followed accounts gather on the Watched Traders screen. Accounts from different exchanges can sit in one list, up to 20 people.

At the top of that screen, the positions of the collected accounts are combined by asset. It works like the Satoshi Index, but the base is the accounts you chose rather than 100 ranked ones.

Below that, an account card that has changed recently carries a "Changed" mark and the time of the last change.

The refresh cycle matches the Satoshi Index at about every 30 minutes, with dYdX accounts every three hours. It is not a live screen.

4. Alerts arrive after the change

Accounts linked through an exchange API can receive alerts on watched traders' position flips and large trades.

A flip is when the same asset in the same account goes from long to short, or short to long. A large trade is when the size of a position changes sharply.

The alert arrives not right after the position changes but after the next refresh. By the time you open it, the account may already have moved again.

So an alert is closer to a record that "this account changed in this way" than to a signal that you should act now.

Some things alerts do not say. Public data does not show why the account changed, at what price it entered, or whether it has a stop-loss.

5. Four things that watching does not show

The first is the whole picture of the person. Only one account on one exchange is visible, so an opposite position held on another exchange or in another wallet cannot be seen. The same goes for a short that hedges spot holdings.

The second is what a ranking is. Short-window rankings tend to lift those who guessed the direction of the price over that window. Accounts that were lucky and accounts that are consistent sit on the same table.

The third is the difference in size and leverage. A long held by an account running tens of millions of dollars and a long in the same direction with your own money are not the same risk. What is public is the position, not the loss that person can absorb.

The fourth is delay. Public account data is as late as the refresh cycle, so the position you see may already have been closed.

None of this means that watching is pointless. It means that what this feature gives you is information, not judgment.

Wrapping up: following is an observation tool with no order button

• Following in Satoshi Note gathers public accounts' positions and tells you when they change.
• It places no orders and promises no returns.
• Alerts are as late as the refresh cycle, and they do not show an account's full picture or its reasons.

Watching how a followed account's positions change over a long stretch begins to show a pattern in one person's behavior behind the numbers. That is information a top-100 total cannot give.

Between seeing a position and acting on it, the viewer's own judgment always has to come in once.

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Check it yourself in the Satoshi Index

The Satoshi Index ranks public accounts on Hyperliquid, Lighter, dYdX and Pacifica by performance, then shows how much the top 100 traders hold long and short in each asset.

Rankings and asset screens can be viewed without logging in. Following and the watched traders list need a login.

https://satoshinote.io/traders

FAQ

If I follow a trader, are their trades executed in my account?

No. Satoshi Note places no orders. Following gathers public accounts' positions in one place and sends alerts when they change.

Are the alerts real time?

No. Positions are re-read about every 30 minutes, and dYdX every three hours. Alerts arrive after a change is confirmed at one of those refreshes.

How many traders can I follow?

You can keep up to 20 traders in the watched list, and accounts from different exchanges can sit in the same list.

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Data basis: the morning snapshot of 6:47 a.m. KST on November 2, 7-day top 100 on Hyperliquid, Lighter, dYdX and Pacifica combined. Amounts are in US dollars with no exchange rate applied. This column states the views of the Satoshi Note team; it does not recommend following any trader or taking any position, and it promises no returns.