Independence: who pays, and what the money does not buy
Two sources. Firms and brokers pay for fixed-scope measurements of their own data. Readers pay nothing; the newsletter is free. No affiliate links, no sponsorships, no referral fees from any firm, broker or platform.
A paying firm buys the measurement, not the result. The scope and price are agreed before any data is seen. The script is the published one, and it runs inside the firm’s own systems: no individual account records are transferred to us, only aggregate counts. We will not alter a figure, narrow a period or change a denominator to produce a more favourable number, and a finding of no measurable effect is a completed, invoiced deliverable.
A firm may decline to have its own engagement’s result published. If it does, we publish nothing from that engagement, in any form, and we may say only that an engagement was performed. A firm cannot pay to change a number — in a report it commissioned or in anything we publish for free.
Free research about traders is never funded by a firm. It may quote a firm’s own published statements and figures, with a link, as any study cites its sources; it never rates, ranks or recommends a firm. Where it questions a firm’s published figure, it says exactly why and names the source. Free research is published whether or not the result is interesting, and corrections to it are logged on the Corrections page.
No account data is sold or shared. Aggregates only are published.
We do not recommend firms, brokers, platforms or strategies to anyone, on the basis of a client engagement or otherwise.
We issue no badge, seal or certificate. A badge sold by a measurer to the firms it measures is the conflict this page exists to rule out.
A firm may say a figure was “measured by donttrade under a fixed-scope agreement”, and only for a figure from a signed engagement; no one may describe it as audited, certified or verified. If you see that claim anywhere else, it is not ours; tell us.
If you have a complaint about a firm, take it to the firm, or to the dispute body it belongs to. Please don’t email us for firm recommendations; we can’t help with individual disputes.
Research and sales are kept apart
Research pages carry no prices, and pages that sell carry no research figures. The site’s build fails if either rule is broken, so this is checked every time the site is published. The site header and footer link to Pricing and Start a trial on every page, research pages included, and each study ends with a plain “For firms” link, with no price beside it.
No one can buy, see or veto a public study
Free research is never shown to a firm before publication. The one exception is a co-published study with a data partner, who sees the draft and can correct facts about itself but cannot change a result.
Client names
No client’s name or result is used in marketing without written consent.
Referral fees
None, in either direction, from any firm, broker, journal or platform.
Twelve rules
These rules apply from the first Plan Gap Index issue and the first public draft of the measurement spec (both 2 November 2026). Each one can be checked from the outside.
- The spec is separate from paid work. The spec, its test suite and its change log are public. No contract can require a change to the spec. Paid work that touches the spec is logged by kind, never by client.
- No one can pay for a score. No one can pay to change, time, leave out or preview a number. The same scope costs every firm the same price.
- No paid-for public ratings. donttrade never publishes a rating, score or ranking of a firm or a copy leader that the rated party paid for.
- The index names no firm. It measures traders in public data, in aggregate, with at least 50 accounts in every reported group. There are no platform league tables.
- Every public-data result is published, whichever way it comes out, on a date announced in advance, with the hash of its pre-registration.
- A yearly outcome ledger. Once a year we publish how many private engagements we had and how their results were distributed, with no names.
- No early access. No client, partner or investor sees an index issue before the public does.
- Conformance is never sold. Anyone can check an implementation against the spec with the free public runner and declare the result themselves. donttrade sells no badge or mark, and nothing it sells is a certification, a verification or an audit.
- No referral or affiliate income from any firm we measure, or from anyone else. If donttrade ever pays a reseller, that is disclosed on this page first.
- Our own code passes the same suite, through the same public runner, and its output is published.
- Every index issue carries a disclosure line: “donttrade had paid engagements with N firms in the last 12 months; none saw this issue before publication; none is named in it.”
- Outside oversight as it grows. From the first outside implementation of the spec, an advisory group of at least three people with no commercial tie to donttrade. From three independent implementations, or one regulator or industry-body reference, an offer to hand the spec to a neutral body.
Complaints
Write to donttrade.research@gmail.com with the subject “Independence complaint”. This is a one-person practice, so the person who answers is the person you are complaining about; to make that checkable, every complaint is logged, without names, on the Corrections page.