Retail Trader

The research task

Contribute a complete brokerage trading history and your own explanations of important decisions to a dataset studying how individual traders think and act. This is a one-time task paying a flat $400 upon completion.

What to submit

• Export the complete transaction history from your personal US brokerage account using the broker's standard export. Include at least 24 months and every trade, with none removed.
• Remove your name, account numbers, address and other identifying information before uploading the history.
• Write approximately 100 to 250 words describing your strategy, typical holding period, instruments and trading services you use.
• Explain at least five significant or influential trades, such as large gains, large losses or high conviction decisions. Stock trades are preferred.

For each annotation, describe your reasoning at entry or exit and the information that drove the decision. Keep later reflections on the outcome separate from your original reasoning, and identify the exact trade using a symbol, date, side and quantity that match the history.

The writing takes up to approximately one and a half hours.

Participation criteria

• Be at least 18 years old and based in the United States.
• Have at least two years of active trading in your own account and at least 1,000 trades during that period.
• Trade stocks; options also count.
• Hold the account with a US retail broker and be willing to share the full history without removing trades.

There is no minimum education requirement or required field of study. Students, professionals from finance or other fields, and full time traders may participate. Current or former professional traders must contribute history from their personal accounts.

Accounts you do not own, including managed, employer or proprietary trading firm accounts, do not qualify. Predominantly cryptocurrency or futures trading also falls outside the participation criteria.

Payment and data use

The $400 payment requires both the full history upload and complete annotations for at least five trades. Partial submissions are not paid.

Participation also requires signing a content license agreement covering how the submitted trading history and annotations are licensed and used. The agreement is completed during the application process.