A figure about your traders that you didn’t compute yourself.

• Listed on Quantocracy’s daily wrap, 12 Oct 2026 (quantocracy.com)
• 6 published studies
• scripts public · gaps disclosed in each study
• 5 corrections logged

What it costs

Launch pricing, valid for engagements signed before 31 March 2027. Prices in USD.

The standard engagement measures one thing today: the disposition effect (selling winners more readily than losers), the first part of the plan gap we can measure, reported as PGR, PLR, their pooled ratio and a t statistic, with the counts behind them. No other standard measure is offered yet. If the figure you publish is a different one, write anyway; we’ll tell you plainly whether the published script can compute it. Run a copy-trading platform? See the copy-leader persistence test below. Does your marketing say your product changes how traders behave? See the claims substantiation test.

Optional quarterly re-check: the same measurement on a fresh extract, at 25% of the tier price, payable in advance, delivered in 5 business days.

Prices in US dollars (USD), before any applicable sales tax. Every engagement is invoiced in USD; pay by bank transfer, or, in Canada, the CAD equivalent by Interac e-Transfer. Card payments are accepted through a secure Stripe link sent with your scope. One-off engagement, fixed scope, no subscription. Invoices read “Payable on acceptance — thank you.” and “Balance due within 7 days of delivery — thank you.”

Delivery times are in business days. The clock starts when payment is received and the script’s output comes back without validation errors, and it pauses while a clarifying question is open.

If you don’t like the number, no one else sees it. You can decline publication outright, and we publish nothing from the engagement. The fee is the same either way.

The method is the same for every firm and for the free research. Paying buys scope and privacy, never a result. Independence policy →

Copy-trading platforms: the copy-leader persistence test

Sold to platforms only, never to followers. For copy-trading apps, social trading networks, crypto exchanges with copy features and vault front-ends.

Does your leader ranking predict what followers actually earn after copying costs and delay? The test answers that out of sample: leaders are ranked on one period and judged on a later period the ranking never saw. It is adjusted for luck, so a ranking counts only if it does better than chance would.

• A sealed method. The ranking rule, the periods, the cost and delay assumptions and the pass mark are fixed in writing before anyone sees data, and they don’t change afterwards.
• Run on your systems. Your engineers run a script we send with the scope, and can read every line of it first. Only aggregate results come back. We hold no data: no follower, leader or account record leaves your systems.
• About your ranking, not about people. The result names no leader and scores no one.
• Not advice. It is not a recommendation of any trader or leader, to you or to your followers, and no guarantee of future results. It is not an audit or a certification: please don’t call any leader or ranking audited, certified or verified.
• Optional re-check. The same test on a fresh period, on the quarterly re-check terms above.

Which engagement

• Trial, $745 USD: your first test at the introductory price, one per platform: one ranking rule and one period. The trial terms apply, with that test in place of the disposition figure.
• Snapshot, $2,500 USD: one ranking rule and one period.
• Memo, $6,000 USD: the full test: every ranking rule and period agreed in the scope, written up with its limits stated.
• Outcomes pack, $12,000 USD: the full test, plus a re-check of the same rules on a later period.

Payment, delivery times and refunds are those of the engagement. By email only, no calls.

Firms that make behaviour claims: the claims substantiation test

We report the result whether it supports the claim or not. For trading journals, education sellers, prop firms and brokers whose marketing says their product changes how traders behave, such as “our journal makes you more disciplined”.

Does the claim hold on your own users’ records? Before anyone sees data, the claim is written down as a test: which behaviour, which users, which periods, what comparison, and what result would support it. That test is sealed (fingerprinted with a SHA-256 hash) and then run once, as written.

• Pre-registered and sealed. The measure, the comparison and the pass mark are fixed in writing before anyone sees data, and they don’t change afterwards.
• Run on your systems. Your engineers run a script we send with the scope, and can read every line of it first. Only aggregate results come back; no user record leaves your systems.
• Either answer is a finished result. We report the result whether it supports the claim or not. The fee is the same either way, and you decide whether anything is published.
• Limits stated. We tell you in the scope, before you pay, whether your records can test the claim at all, and what the design can and cannot show. A before-and-after comparison, for example, cannot by itself show that your product caused a change.
• Not a certification, a verification or an audit. It is a test, with its result and its limits. Please don’t call the claim or the product certified, verified or audited.

The law, in neutral terms (not legal advice). In Canada, the Competition Act treats as reviewable conduct a representation to the public, made to promote a product or a business interest, in the form of “a statement, warranty or guarantee of the performance, efficacy or length of life of a product that is not based on an adequate and proper test thereof, the proof of which lies on the person making the representation” (s. 74.01(1)(b)). Whether a particular test is adequate and proper for a particular claim is for you and your legal advisers to judge. We give no legal advice, and we don’t say that our test meets that standard.

Which engagement

• Trial, $745 USD: your first test at the introductory price, one per firm: one claim, one measure and one comparison. The trial terms apply, with that test in place of the disposition figure.
• Snapshot, $2,500 USD: one claim, one measure and one comparison.
• Memo, $6,000 USD: the full test: every measure and comparison agreed in the scope, written up with its result and its limits.
• Outcomes pack, $12,000 USD: the full test, plus the same sealed test run again on a later period.

Payment, delivery times and refunds are those of the engagement. By email only, no calls.

What your staff export

Five columns, one row per open position per day, plus a row on the day it closes. One position, as rows, from the export guide:

account_id,date,position_id,closed,pnl
a7f3,2026-03-02,p91,0,110.50
a7f3,2026-03-03,p91,0,-40.25
a7f3,2026-03-04,p91,1,240.00

The first two rows are the unrealised mark at each end of day; the last is the realisation. A list of closed trades alone is refused by the script, by design: it needs the positions you held and did not close. To see the shape first, run it on the synthetic file that make_fixture.py writes.

What happens after you get in touch

1. You fill in the short form or email the population and period you want measured. We reply within 1 business day.
2. Scope sheet. We send a written scope and a fixed price. The legal contracting party is named in the engagement agreement, before anything is paid; an NDA or DPA is signed on request.
3. Accept. You accept the scope and pay the first invoice: 50% on acceptance, or the full fee for the trial. Payable on acceptance — thank you.
4. Your staff run the script inside your systems and send back what it prints. Nothing else. The delivery clock starts once payment is received and that output comes back without validation errors; it pauses while a clarifying question is open.
5. Delivery. We return the memo within the tier’s business days. For the Memo, Outcomes pack and Snapshot, the balance is due within 7 days of delivery — thank you. A “no measurable effect” answer is a finished job and is invoiced as one. You decide whether anything is published.

$ python3 make_fixture.py --out fixture.csv --seed 7
$ python3 partner_disposition.py fixture.csv --pnl-basis price
pnl basis:            price (funding excluded)
accounts:             30
qualifying sale days: 256

data rows parsed:                   14400
blank records skipped:              0
rows in qualifying pairs:           2048
rows discarded (no close that day): 12352
same-day marks superseded by close: 0
orphan closes (no mark row):        14 of 335 (4.2%)
identifier spelling collisions:     0
unicode data version:               14.0.0

PGR                   0.2178
PLR                   0.1119
ratio (PGR/PLR)       1.9470
t statistic           6.51
n gains  (RG+PG)      1001
n losses (RL+PL)      1046

realised gains   RG   218
paper gains      PG   783
realised losses  RL   117
paper losses     PL   929
zero-pnl rows excluded 1

AGE-CONTROLLED FIGURES (holding age = calendar days since the
position's first row in this file)
positions with a known open date:               329
positions open on the first date (left out):    240
rows used (qualifying pairs, pnl not 0):        975

ratio, ages pooled, same rows:                  2.0325
within-age ratio (Mantel-Haenszel):             1.9273
                                                95% interval 1.3825 to 2.6867, by account

holding age      gain rows  loss rows     PGR     PLR   ratio  within-age
<=1 day                 43         32  0.2093  0.0938   2.233       2.232
2-5 days                73         75  0.2055  0.1333   1.541       1.618
6-20 days              192        224  0.2240  0.0804   2.787       2.595
21-60 days             168        168  0.1667  0.1071   1.556       1.441
61-250 days              0          0       -       -       -           -
251+ days                0          0       -       -       -           -

fixed effects (account + holding day), linear probability model:
  gain coefficient:                             0.103986
  standard error (account and date):            0.021478
  ratio implied for gain rows (ATT):            2.0878
                                                95% interval 1.4495 to 3.7307

gain timing (rows that have a previous row for the same position):
  rows:                                         933
  ratio, ages pooled: same day / previous row:  2.0604 / 1.8627
  within-age ratio: same day / previous row:    1.9488 / 1.7481
  fixed-effects ATT: same day / previous row:   2.0993 / 1.8586
  sign changed since previous row, sold rows:   10 of 138
  sign changed since previous row, unsold rows: 60 of 795

HOW TO READ THE AGE-CONTROLLED FIGURES
- Positions are sold less often the longer they are held. If losing
  positions are on average older than winning ones, the pooled ratio at
  the top can show an effect that is only an age pattern. The within-age
  ratio compares winners and losers of the same holding age; use it, not
  the pooled ratio, for the size of the effect.
- Holding age is counted from each position's first row in this file.
  Positions already open on the file's first date are left out of these
  figures because their age is unknown; the pooled figures still use them.
- The fixed-effects line compares each account with itself, at the same
  holding day. It is a different average from the pooled ratio, so the two
  are not expected to match.
- Gain timing: a position's gain or loss on the day it is sold may partly
  reflect the sale itself (the fill or the closing mark). The lines that
  take the gain or loss from the position's previous row avoid that. If
  they are much smaller, the effect depends on same-day timing.
- Not ruled out: traders may sell large moves in either direction more
  often (a V-shaped pattern, Ben-David and Hirshleifer 2012). Separating
  that from a preference for selling winners needs the size of each gain
  or loss relative to the position, which these five columns do not carry.
- The intervals here are clustered by account (the within-age ratio) and
  by account and date (fixed effects). The t statistic at the top treats
  every row as independent and is not.
- NOT MEASURED means the data cannot support the figure, never zero.

What you receive

A one-page memo with these fields, every time:

The question

The population and period you asked us to measure, in one sentence

The figure

Pooled PGR, PLR and their ratio, with the counts behind them

The figure, holding age fixed

The same comparison made only between positions of the same holding age, with its 95% interval; beside it the pooled ratio on the same rows, and a fixed-effects ratio that compares each account with itself

Precision

The t statistic and the counts behind it

Denominator

Exactly who was counted, and who was left out

Period

The dates the extract covers

Accounts and observations

How many of each were counted

Script version

The exact code that produced the figure

What this does not show

The limits, stated before anyone asks

Who may rely on it

You only

See a specimen memo, and the client script’s output on a synthetic file →

The agreement, in brief

• Fixed scope and price, in writing before any data is seen.
• Your records never leave your systems. Only what the script prints comes back.
• Publication only with your consent. You review anything describing your data first and may decline outright.
• Use of the name. You may say a figure was “measured by donttrade under a fixed-scope agreement”, and nothing stronger: never audited, certified or verified. We name you only with your consent.
• Licence for the engagement. The commercial licence to run the script on your records comes with the engagement.

How this compares

Swipe the table sideways for more columns →

Why a re-run number is harder to wave away

The Financial Commission’s prop-firm code took effect in July 2026. It asks for drawdown rules that are objective and verifiable, and certification runs on attestations: firms sign one to join and file quarterly attestations that the Commission can review. (Code of Conduct; FinanceFeeds)

Firms already pay for outside checks. Hola Prime commissioned Deloitte for an independent review of payout processing and published the result. That review covered operations, in a window the firm chose. It did not measure how traders behaved. (release)

A figure someone else computed, with the method published, can be checked by anyone who reads it.

Publishing a pass rate? Check the arithmetic with the free pass-rate calculator →

What you risk, and what you don’t

• The price is fixed in writing before any data is seen.
• We will not change a figure, narrow a period or change a denominator.
• You can decline publication; the fee is the same.
• Our liability is capped at the fees paid.
• The engagement agreement (scope, data terms, licence) is sent with the scope, before you pay. A blank template is available on request.
• Either side can stop in writing. No cancellation fees. The trial is refundable in full until your staff first run the script on your records (data kick-off), and after that through the reproduction refund. Memo, Outcomes pack and Snapshot are paid 50% on acceptance and 50% within 7 days of delivery; if either side stops, completed work is billed pro rata.
• Before you sign anything, run the public script on a test file (the licence allows 32 days of evaluation on test data). If it doesn’t run, you’ve lost nothing.

What the money does not buy

• No signals, no picks, no predictions. Nothing here tells anyone what to buy.
• No edge claims. A measurement of how your traders behave is not a forecast of how they will behave next quarter, and it will not be written as one.
• No flattering version. If the number comes out against your marketing, that is the number. You can decline to publish it; we will not publish a more comfortable version instead.
• Not an audit, not an assurance engagement, not a certification, and no regulatory status or endorsement of your solvency or performance. We issue no badge or seal. This is a one-off research service: it performs no operational function for you and needs no access to your systems.

For your compliance team

Frank answers to the questions due diligence asks first.

Independence policy: who pays, and what the money does not buy →