Smartlab (smart-lab.ru) is the largest universal information platform in Russia for participants in financial and stock markets, combining a collective blog of traders, a forum, a club and a specialized resource with functionality for investors and traders.
The official website of Smartlab was founded in 2010, the author of the project is Timofey Martynov. Reviews from the creator say that Smart-lab.ru was originally planned as a traders’ club for co-working spaces, gradually evolving into an extensive trading social network, which continues to expand by adding new sections, tools and opportunities for partner companies. According to Martynov's reviews, Smartlab (smart-lab.ru) is the No. 1 source of useful information on markets, stock quotes, bonds, dividends, investment ideas, reviews of brokers and a place to discuss trading strategies, as well as a forum where they communicate and exchange experienced traders and investors of all levels of professionalism, from beginners to institutional workers in the field. Based on reviews, in terms of development vector, Smart-lab focuses on such thematic portals covering the financial market and all kinds of private investment instruments (stocks, futures, bonds, etc.) such as:
- Investfunds - site about investments and stock markets;
- Cbonds - financial information agency;
- Quote - a forum for traders and investors;
- MFD is a financial portal.
In the reviews of the founders, Smartlab is positioned as a fundamental project, whose system is focused on maximum functionality, user comfort and maintaining healthy and adequate relationships on the site between all forum and blog participants. Let's check how true the words are by checking real user reviews.
Idea and structure of Smart Lab
Home page.
The smart-lab.ru service was founded in 2010 by former TV presenter Timofey Martynov. Smart Lab brings together traders aimed at improving their professional qualities and trading skills.
Site structure.
Here you can find a huge amount of information presented in the form of texts, videos and graphics, as well as online services.
Smart Lab is primarily a platform for sharing experiences, communicating and reading thematic posts. The main idea of the creators was to unite the disparate trading community and organize more active and productive interaction between its members.
Ribbon
The feed includes blogs that the participant has subscribed to, where you can view news, polls, comments and just posts.
Of interest is the “Offtopic Feed,” which contains all posts that are not related to the main topics of the forums, for example, humor or poetry about trading.
Forum topics
Forums.
The forums are structured according to the following topics.
| Subject | Peculiarities |
| Stock | Contains information about stock trading and current market trends. |
| Trading | Includes a wealth of notes on all aspects of trading. |
| Forex | Combines records only on Forex topics. |
| Bonds | Designed for those interested in profitable bond trading. |
| Algo trading | Contains articles about different styles and methods of automated trading. |
| Options | Section about binary options and everything you need to make money on them. |
| Banks | Includes data on banks (liquidation, consolidation, asset value, etc.). |
| Software | Posts on the topic of trading robots and other software useful for traders are published here. |
| Brokers | The section is dedicated to brokerage companies, their reliability and trading conditions. |
According to community rules, a post must have tags that will help it fall into the appropriate category. Tags make searching easier and help readers find exactly what they need.
Blogs
Traders value Smart Lab for access to first-hand information, for the exchange of experience and the opportunity for the author of the post.
The resource has 2 types of blogs.
| Type | Author |
| Private | The owners of personal blogs are ordinary traders, many of whom have impressive experience in trading Forex, binary options, futures, and so on. They are experts in their field and help less experienced community members increase their knowledge and earn more. The second category of personal blog owners are beginners or those who came to get advice, read trading news and notes on topics that interest them. In the comments to the author's posts, they ask questions and try to better understand the topic of the post. As of October 2021, there are 41,901 personal blogs registered on Smart Lab. |
| Corporate | The authors of such blogs are representatives of various companies, mainly brokers. For example, Amarkets, StForex, Gerchik & Co, Finam and many others. Among those who regularly publish entries are financial companies, for example, the Moscow and St. Petersburg exchanges, Sberbank, and the Bank of Russia. Corporate blogs attract many readers, and even TradingView has its own page here with publications on current topics (for example, cryptocurrencies). As of October 2021, 91 companies blog here. |
A collective blog in the usual sense of the word cannot be maintained here; each entry must have one author (person or company representative).
Trader's statement about the difference between Smart Lab and collective blogs.
The following systems are used to control the quality of recordings:
- Rating. Both corporate and personal blogs are sorted by rating. The top includes pages containing the largest number of publications that are interesting to readers. The interesting thing is that you can only rate an entry with a plus sign, and there is no minus sign.
- Moderation. According to the community rules, off-topic is prohibited, in addition, it is not allowed to take readers away from the page. The entire content of the article should be located on Smart Lab, and links to other resources should be given only as a reference to the original source.
Blog posts are published on the following topics.
| Subjects | Peculiarities |
| Earnings on financial markets | A description of the author's methods of earning money and your experience in well-known methods of making a profit is welcome. The content of posts should be informative and help other community members increase their income. |
| Philosophy and psychology of enrichment | Smart Lab regularly publishes articles and notes on personal growth, risk management and money management. Recommendations of books on the philosophy of success and the psychology of rich people are popular. Direct advertising of your personal blogs, trainings or courses to increase productivity is only possible for a fee, and is prohibited in regular posts. |
| Analytics in the field of economics, scientific research on trading | Community members would like to more accurately predict their profits, so many of them pay attention to a scientific approach, in particular fundamental analysis. Articles and reviews on economic and financial topics increase the literacy of readers; they are aimed at forming their own vision of the situation and the ability to more competently analyze the market. |
| Services and tools for traders | Among the posts there are often reviews of new trading robots, criticism or analysis of existing advisors, indicators, and the like. The authors of the posts post reports on their transactions, test trading systems and offer their own options for increasing profits. |
| Reviews of companies and events | Smart Lab is one of the few resources where there are corporate blogs. Representatives of brokers and other financial companies participate in discussions and leave their notes. Community members can express their opinions on the quality of work of companies and their services. Traders love the fact that they can quickly receive notifications about interesting promotions or events simply by subscribing to one of the many corporate blogs. |
The record format allows you to solve 2 problems at once:
- Share your experience, ideas and suggestions with people, receive criticism and feedback.
- Structure your knowledge, compose an article on a specific topic.
Most notes are illustrated with pictures, screenshots or graphs, and many have videos attached.
Quotes
All quotes.
Smart Lab provides quotes for a large number of assets:
- currency pairs (including cryptocurrencies);
- raw materials;
- indexes.
Each asset has its own page; using the control panel at the top you can switch between them.
View stock quotes.
The online service for some assets has sorting or the ability to view change graphs.
For example, in the stocks section, you can sort data by the following parameters:
- sector;
- capitalization;
- form of ownership (private or state company);
- market (export, domestic or any);
- average daily volume (in millions of rubles).
Irrelevant data goes to the Archive and is used for analytics.
Indexes.
In the section on indexes you can view the chart.
Graphic form of the image.
The quote provider is the Moscow Exchange.
Calendars
Economic calendar.
On Smart Lab you can not only view economic news, but also add individual topics to “My Calendar”. The service is convenient for those who trade short-term on news, and for those who prefer to build long-term forecasts based on events of global significance.
The topics of stocks and bonds are highlighted separately so that traders interested in these assets can find them faster.
Books
Literature on Smart Lab.
The “Books” section contains more than 597 books and over 899 reviews of them. Some of the books are available for free download, and some are available for paid download.
The literature covers the following topics:
- self-development;
- psychology;
- business;
- economy;
- investments;
- trading.
Based on stylistics, you can find both scientific works and easier-to-read texts for beginners. Separately, you can view the top 100 recommended books and reviews.
Smartopedia
Knowledge base.
To improve the literacy of traders, a “Smartopedia” section has been created, in which 2 categories of entries are published.
| Category | Content |
| The best articles on various topics | Bloggers' posts with the most upvotes appear here. |
| Concepts in alphabetical order | Alphabetical sorting covers many concepts from the field of economics (in particular investments), trading in the stock and derivatives markets, Forex and binary options. |
It is possible to put a “plus” under the notes; a link is provided where the information was taken from.
Interesting! Many of the entries were left by the founder of the service, Timofey Martynov.
Reviews about Smartlab
There are no reviews of Smartlab on third-party resources, since the service does not directly sell paid services and goods. However, reading the reviews and comments of the Smartlab participants themselves, there is a not entirely “healthy” atmosphere.
In the reviews, traders complain about:
- lack of incentive to write for the project;
- moderator bias;
- ignoring reviews of advertising of fraudulent structures.
Objectively speaking, in terms of scale and functionality, Smartlab has no analogues in the Russian-language segment of the Internet, having an impressive database on financial markets, educational materials and functional tools for experienced and novice investors. Of course, this does not eliminate the shortcomings, however, using the Smartlab resource is associated with risks only if you mindlessly follow traders’ forecasts, and when making decisions about choosing a broker or mentor, you are guided by advertising content.
Registration Features
You can read the posts of other participants without registering, but in order to leave your comment or post you need it.
Questionnaire.
Registration is very simple:
- You must fill out the form with accurate information.
- An SMS with a code is sent to the specified phone number.
- By entering it in the confirmation window, the user receives an account.
The community is moderated; when filling out the form, you will need to read the rules and check the box to agree to them.
Trading community: general rules for using forums
Each trading forum has general rules for participants, which vary in details, but the concept is the same. The rules concern the registration procedure, behavior on the forum, publication of messages and the relationship between users and the administration. Regulatory standards are established to ensure a business-friendly and friendly environment.
For example, messages that go beyond the topic of discussion are considered a violation of the rules; they are designated offtopic (English: Off topic). Violations are considered sending identical messages to different topics of the same or different sections, as well as messages that do not make sense - flood (English Flood - flood; a flood of words - flow of words). Insulting one of the participants or provoking conflicts is unacceptable on forums - flame (eng. Flame - flame, passion; to fan the flame - incite passions). Individuals who purposefully try to provoke conflicts between participants in the traders forum are called trolls (Swedish trvll - evil creatures in Scandinavian mythology). For violation of the rules, sanctions are provided in the form of restrictions and blocking.
Offline events
Advertising of a conference with Smart Lab speakers.
The community works not only online, meetings and conferences are also held live. Announcements of upcoming events regularly appear on the website market.smart-lab.ru, where you can also purchase tickets.
Notifications appear in the Feed on the main Smart Lab website and in thematic notes of users.
An example of a speaker line-up.
Among the speakers at the conferences are representatives of large brokerage companies, the Moscow Exchange, banks and other financial organizations. Sometimes Timofey Martynov personally acts as a moderator.
