Measure the gap between your traders’ plans and their trades.
Traders plan how they will handle wins and losses. What they actually do can differ. We call that difference the plan gap, and we measure it, starting with one measure available today: are your traders more likely to sell a winning trade than a losing one?
Your staff run our public script on your own systems. Only totals come back to us. You get the number, how sure it is, and a one-page memo, at a fixed price published before you ask.
Start a Pilot See a sample memo
Refunded in full if your own re-run of the same script on the same export does not reproduce the figure. Pricing
Trading your own account? The free trade-stats dashboard reads your MT5, IBKR or Tradovate file inside your browser. A habit report for traders is on the way.
Join the waitlist — $39 founding price Try the free trade stats
Headline numbers
- Closed trades
- 160
- Net result
- +$277.95
- Win rate
- 51.9%
- Profit factor
- 1.14
- Mean result per trade
- +$1.74
- Largest drawdown
- −$341.20
Equity and drawdown
- 6 published studies
- Scripts public for 4 of 6
- 6 corrections, dated and logged
- No firm can pay to change a number
How it works for a firm
- Tell us which traders and which dates. A short form or an email, about five minutes.
- Get a written scope and a fixed price within 1 business day. Your staff run the public script on your own systems. Only totals come back.
- Get the number, how sure it is, and a one-page memo. You decide whether anything is published.
A published finding
76.1%
of 4,659 retail traders realised their gains more readily than their losses.
From our replication of Odean (1998) on a free, public (CC0) data set. The disposition effect is common; a measurement on your own records shows whether it is in your traders’ trades.
Free tools. No account.
| Tool | The question it answers | What you give it |
|---|---|---|
| Trade stats | What does my own trade history show? | Your trade file |
| Prop-firm challenge simulator | How would my past trading days have fared under a challenge’s rules? | Your trade file, or win rate and average win and loss; the rules |
| Lot size calculator | How many lots match the amount I chose to risk at this stop? | Balance, risk amount, stop distance, value per point |
Pricing, in short
- Firms
- Fixed prices, published and the same for every firm, starting with a Pilot. The price is set in writing before anyone sees data. Firm pricing
- Traders
- The free tools cost nothing. The habit report is not on sale yet: $39 founding price for the first 100 buyers. Nothing is charged now. Trader pricing
What donttrade adds to a trading journal
| Question | Most trading journals | donttrade |
|---|---|---|
| Logs your trades | Yes | No: it reads the export your platform already makes |
| Needs an account | Usually | No account or login |
| Tests whether a pattern is more than noise | Varies | Yes, a stated statistical check, with “not enough trades to tell” under 30 trades |
| Shows the method and the code | Rarely | Yes |
| Tells you what to buy or sell | Some do | No |
No cookies. No analytics. Firms can’t pay to change a number.
Firms pay for fixed-scope measurements of their own data. Readers pay nothing. Nothing on the research pages is for sale, and every correction is logged with its date.
Questions
Is our firm’s data safe?
Your trading records never leave your systems. Your staff run our public script on your own computers, and you can read every line first. Only the totals it prints come back to us: no account IDs, no trades, no names.
What if no effect is found?
Then that is your answer, and it is a finished result. The price is fixed before anyone sees data, so you pay the same either way. The result stays private unless you choose to publish it.
What does it cost?
Every price is published on the pricing page, the same for every firm, and fixed in writing in the scope before any data is seen. No cancellation fees.
Is this advice?
No. It describes past behaviour. It does not tell anyone what to trade.
Where does my trade file go?
The free tools read it inside your browser tab; those pages block every outgoing request, so the file is not uploaded. When the habit report launches, the page that runs it will say exactly what it sends.
Refunds?
Firms: a Pilot is refunded in full if your extract can’t be made to run, or if your own re-run of the same script on the same export does not reproduce the figure. Traders: nothing is sold yet. Cancellation and refund terms
Who’s behind it?
donttrade is one person, writing under a pen name, based in Canada. Every study names the script that made its numbers, or says plainly when it is still to follow, so you check the work, not the author. The legal contracting party is named in writing, in the engagement agreement, before anything is paid. About
Two ways to start
Trading your own account
Start with the free trade-stats dashboard: your own file, in your browser, in seconds.
At a firm
Tell us the population and the period. You get a written scope and a fixed price within 1 business day.
Prefer email? Write to donttrade.research@gmail.com. We reply within 1 business day (Eastern Time, Monday to Friday).