Giordano Salvatori, founder of STA · 23/10/2026 · 6 min read
Not from the website, which can look beautiful even when there is nothing behind it. Not from reviews, which can be bought. Not from the number of followers of whoever recommends it. You recognise it from things you can check yourself, outside the site itself, in a few minutes.
The starting point is this: the platform must be authorised by an authority that answers for what it does, and it must explain in plain words how it makes money and how much you can lose. If one of the two is missing, the rest matters little. The big picture, from the beginning, is in the guide to mindful online trading.
In Italy only authorised firms can offer investment services, and the list of intermediaries is public on the Consob website. Many European brokers operate in Italy under the authorisation of their home country, which is valid across the whole Union. In that case you find the name in the registers of the authority of the country where they are based, and in the European ones of ESMA.
For cryptocurrencies, the MiCA regulation has applied in Europe since 2024, which requires an authorisation for anyone offering crypto services and a public register of authorised providers. If a crypto platform does not appear there, a sentence at the bottom of the page is not enough to replace the registration.
The check goes like this, in four steps:
Being registered tells you that someone is supervising. It does not tell you that you will make money, and it does not remove market risk: an authorised platform can lose you money just like an unauthorised one, if the price goes against you. What changes is that, if something goes wrong in your relationship with the platform, you have an authority to turn to.
Almost all online trading scams use the same moves, because they work on people, not on markets. If you see even one of them, stop.
The mechanism is almost always the same. At first they show you small gains on the screen to get you to pay in more, and only later do you find out the numbers were fake. That is why the balance you see on a platform is not enough: only what you can actually withdraw counts.
A serious platform is not afraid to talk about losses. It writes them on the main pages, not in the last lines.
In the European Union, brokers that offer CFDs must disclose the percentage of their retail accounts that lose money, and the published figures are generally between 60% and 90%. If a platform does not state it, or claims that things are different with them without showing anything verifiable, that is a red flag. The article can you make money with online trading? The honest numbers explains them one by one.
It must also tell you what it costs. Commissions, spreads, financing and withdrawal costs must be written clearly and in your language, without having to write to an operator to find them out. And it must let you try first, with a demo account, without asking you to pay in anything.
It is the question that separates the serious cases from the dangerous ones. If your funds are in an account in your name, with an intermediary you can verify, the risk of losing everything to a fraudulent operation drops a lot. If they are in a wallet controlled by someone else, no check will help.
Remember a simple rule: never send money to a person, or to an address dictated to you in a chat. And never give anyone your credentials. If you connect a tool to your account with an API key, read which permissions you are granting and why they are asked for: a withdrawal permission is given only if the reason is clearly written and you understand what it is for.
Another family of offers to look at with suspicion are paid “signals” and programs that say they trade for you. Not because they are all scams, but because they often show only the trades that went well. You can find how to recognise them in reliable crypto trading signals and in automated trading: what it can and cannot do.
There is only one question to ask: can I check the past results, all of them, the negative ones too, in a place that whoever publishes them cannot quietly edit? If the answer is no, the number you see is a marketing promise.
STA does not ask you to pay money to us. It offers trading cards for crypto and US stocks on OKX, built by ten artificial intelligence agents with the Bull and Bear debate, and the funds stay in your OKX account. Every card has its stop, and the history is public and verifiable: the card hashes are on GitHub, at supertradingagents/storico, marked every day with OpenTimestamps, losses included.
On fees: during the launch phase, started on 16 October 2026, STA's fees are temporarily disabled, even in REAL. The standard price list is 18% of the positive net result of each day, with no offsetting of losses, and it is suspended while the launch lasts. For now there is only the web version.
We are not telling you to trust us: we are telling you to check. The DEMO is free forever, with real prices and the same cards as REAL, and an account is required. Before putting real money anywhere, also read when you are ready for a real account.
Every card as soon as it closes, with the result and what STA learned from it. It's free and you don't need to sign up.
Follow the channelA DEMO account with virtual capital and real prices, the same cards as REAL users.
Try DEMO for free →This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Trading crypto-assets involves a high risk, including the total loss of the capital used. Numerical examples are for illustration.
Risk management in trading: how much to risk per trade, how to calculate the position and how to use a stop, with made up examples and a demo account.
Trading online with artificial intelligence: what AI can do, what it can't, how to try it on a demo account and how to spot those who promise too much.
Is trading online worth it? It depends on the costs: spread, fees, swap and slippage. What really weighs on a small account and how to do the maths first.
