I wanted to share a feature idea that could be a strong value add for your investor community and a real differentiator for Alpaca.
The idea
Let account holders generate a live, public, shareable link that displays their verified portfolio performance only. Total return, returns over selectable periods (1M, YTD, 1Y, all time), and a normalized equity curve. It would not reveal positions, holdings, dollar equity, account size, or trade activity. Just percentages, verified by the broker.
The key mechanic: time-weighted returns
This is the part that matters most. The performance figure should be time-weighted, meaning it reflects pure strategy performance and is unaffected by when cash was deposited or withdrawn, or how much. Deposits and withdrawals should never inflate or dilute the number.
That gives you a clean, apples-to-apples measure of decision-making skill rather than a figure distorted by cash flow timing. It also means someone with a $2,000 account and someone with $2 million are directly comparable, and nobody has to reveal their balance to prove their results. This is the same methodology used to evaluate professional funds, so it is the credible standard.
The problem it solves
Track records in retail investing are essentially unverifiable. People rely on screenshots, spreadsheets, and unsupported claims, all easy to fake or cherry-pick. Skilled investors have no way to prove consistency, and audiences have no way to separate signal from noise. A broker-verified link fixes this at the source, because the data comes from Alpaca rather than the user.
Why it is valuable to Alpaca
- Organic reach. Every shared link is an Alpaca-branded asset circulating on X, Reddit, Discord, YouTube, and Substack. Word-of-mouth acquisition at near zero cost.
- Differentiation. No major US broker offers native, privacy-preserving verified performance sharing. It is a genuinely ownable position.
- Retention. Investors who publish a track record have a strong reason to keep assets consolidated and active at Alpaca rather than split across brokers.
- Brand fit. Alpaca is already the API-first, quant-friendly broker. Algo traders, educators, and creators are exactly the people who want to demonstrate strategy performance publicly.
- Ecosystem upside. Exposed as an API endpoint, third parties could build leaderboards, analytics, and community tools on verified Alpaca data, making Alpaca the infrastructure layer for verified performance.
Design considerations
- Strictly opt-in, with one-click revocation and link regeneration.
- Percentages only. No dollar amounts, no positions, no balances.
- “Verified by Alpaca” badge with a data-as-of timestamp.
- User control over which periods are visible, plus an option to stay pseudonymous.
- Standard disclaimers that past performance is not indicative of future results and the page is not investment advice, which keeps the feature clean on compliance.
- Optional depth later: max drawdown, volatility, Sharpe, and benchmark comparison against SPY.
In short
The data already exists in your systems, the privacy model is simple, and the output is a self-distributing asset that makes an Alpaca account more valuable to own. Time-weighted returns are what make it trustworthy.