What Is a Trading Widget? Live Embeds Explained
A trading widget is an embeddable view of a live trading account that renders inside somebody else's page. The visitor's browser requests the data from ShowMyTrades as the page loads, down the same path the public account page uses, so no copy of the numbers sits in the middle waiting to be edited.
How it works
Three formats travel differently, and the difference decides what the reader is actually looking at.
| Format | What it is | How it updates |
|---|---|---|
| Interactive iframe | The widget page rendered inside a frame on your site | Refetched on every page load |
| Dynamic Image | A PNG or SVG served through /api/widget-image/… | Rebuilt on the backend after each data sync; browsers cache it 15 minutes |
| Static Image | A file you download once | Never |
Only the iframe is a live embed. It offers seven types: Stats Card (400×212), Stats Inline (750×80), Equity Curve, Monthly Returns, Currency Pair Stats, Trade History Table and Complete Dashboard. The two Stats types read balance, equity, gain and drawdown straight from stored account metadata, which is why they load fast and keep a fixed height.
The Dynamic Image path is not interactive, but nor is it frozen: the endpoint proxies a file the backend rebuilds whenever the account syncs new data. Eleven types exist — stats, stats-inline, growth-daily, growth-trade, balance, profit, drawdown, growth-mini, summary, monthly and currency-pair — each in light, dark or transparent, as PNG or SVG, with growth-trade forced to PNG. The Static Image is the only genuinely frozen option: it is the moment you clicked download, and it stays that moment forever.
Every variable-height widget — all but the two Stats types — ships with a few lines of JavaScript that measure the rendered height and post it to the parent page. Widget pages are served with frame-ancestors * and open CORS so any domain can host them, marked noindex so they never compete with your own account page, and rate-limited to 50 requests per second and 300 per minute per IP.
Why it matters
Because a screenshot is a picture of numbers, and anyone can make a picture of numbers. An embed is a request to the source, made by the reader's own browser, with a footer linking back to /account/{your-slug} — six of the seven interactive widgets carry a "Verified by ShowMyTrades.com" link, and Stats Inline shrinks it to a bare arrow glyph because it has 80 pixels to work with. The widget shows the flattering part; the link exposes the drawdown, the red months and the costs.
Renaming does not break the embed: retired slugs are resolved by both the iframe endpoint and the image proxy before either gives up. Slugs change at most once every 30 days, with a one-hour correction window.
What the data shows
Public account pages on ShowMyTrades have been visited 94,710 times (August 2026). That is the traffic an embed buys: readers who saw a claim elsewhere and came to check what it omitted. The scepticism is warranted — of the published accounts with history, 38.2% have been more than 20% underwater and 17.6% more than 50%.
The click is worth more when there is something to find. Out of 10,000+ published pages, only 65 carry a verified track record and 264 verified trading privileges; on the page those are the Track Record and Trading Privileges badges, green when confirmed and grey with a warning icon when not. The Complete Dashboard renders both inside the frame.
Where you see it on ShowMyTrades
The Widget Builder lives at Dashboard → Widgets when you are logged in, and at /widgets when you are not, where it works on any public account. The fastest route is the Embed widget button — the </> icon on any public account page — which opens the builder on that account with the Equity Curve preselected. You pick format, type, a width in pixels or percent and a theme; the Equity Curve and Complete Dashboard add colour pickers and series switches for all five chart groups. Then copy the iframe HTML, or the HTML, Markdown and BBCode snippets on the image path.
Privacy carries into the embed. All seven Privacy Options in account settings — Open Trades, Closed Trades, Account Number, Lots, Trade Comments, Stop Loss / Take Profit, Trade Notes — are passed to the Trade History widget, so a column hidden on your public page is hidden inside the frame as well.
Common misunderstandings
- "A widget is just a nicer screenshot." The iframe refetches on every page load. Nothing about it is a stored copy.
- "The image version can be edited like a screenshot." The Dynamic Image is regenerated server-side from your data. The Static Image genuinely is frozen — which is what it is for, and why it belongs in slide decks rather than sales pages.
- "I can embed a private account." You cannot. Widgets serve published accounts only. Unlisted accounts work fine, since they are published, just hidden from discovery.
- "The resize script is optional." Remove it and the widget renders in a fixed box with a scrollbar inside. It is the most common broken embed.
Formats, sizes, placement and the five mistakes that ruin an embed are covered in the widget and embeds guide.
Related terms
Track Record
A track record is the documented history of a trading account. What it must contain, how long it has to run to carry evidence, and what real accounts show.
Trading Portfolio
A portfolio merges several trading accounts into one equity curve, so gain and drawdown are recomputed on the whole thing instead of averaged across accounts.
Verified Track Record
A verified track record is performance data pulled straight from the broker through a read-only link, continuously, with nothing the publisher can edit.
Unlisted Account
Unlisted is a third visibility state: the account page works for anyone holding the link, but it is absent from Explore, search and your public profile.