◆Method and reference
How We Source Claims
Our sourcing standard: primary documents only, every figure dated, hypotheses excluded, and named uncertainty where sources disagree.
Every factual statement on this site is either traceable to a primary document — a regulator publication, a court docket, a filed financial statement, or a firm’s own published terms — or is explicitly labelled as unverified. Where two credible sources disagree, we publish both numbers and say that they disagree rather than choosing one silently.
None of that is a high standard. It is the ordinary one. We write it down because much of what currently ranks on these topics does not meet it.
Why we are explicit about this
While preparing our research we found that a substantial share of the search results for prop-trading regulatory topics consists of machine-generated content citing regulatory events that did not happen. Documented examples included an “NFA Notice I-26-12 dated 30 August 2026”, an “ESMA joint statement of 10 September 2026”, and a “CFTC consultation closing 30 November 2026” — dates in the future relative to their own publication dates, and none of them findable on cftc.gov, nfa.futures.org or esma.europa.eu.
Each of those reads like a citation. Each takes a minute to check. None of them survives the check.
None of that material is used here, and we do not cite the sites it came from on any topic.
The rules we apply
1. Primary sources or nothing. A regulator’s own page, not a summary of it. A court filing, not an article describing it. A firm’s terms page, not an aggregator’s transcription. Where only a secondary source exists, the sentence in the article says so.
2. Every figure carries a date. Prop firm pricing, rules and splits change frequently — in one documented case a firm made eight rule changes in five months. A figure without a date is not information. Our front matter carries an updated field and figures are marked as of that date.
3. Three tiers of claim, and only two of them get published.
- Fact — supported by a primary source, with the URL. Published.
- Inference — our reading of facts. Published, but marked in the text as a reading rather than a finding.
- Hypothesis — plausible, unconfirmed. Never published, in any form.
A hypothesis reads exactly like a fact once it sits in a paragraph between two of them. That is why the third tier is never, rather than sometimes and labelled.
4. Weak sources are not upgraded by repetition. Trustpilot text, forum posts, Discord screenshots and review-blog assertions are not facts. Ten posts saying the same thing are ten posts. Where an individual case is relevant and only a third-party report exists, we attribute it as a reported claim and state that we could not verify it against primary documents.
5. Named uncertainty. Several firms’ self-reported payout totals differ from independently tracked totals by roughly a factor of two. We publish both figures side by side, identify which is which, and do not assert an explanation. Picking one would read better and would be a guess.
6. No market-size figures. The circulating totals for this industry ($850 million, $7.14 billion, $20 billion) are mutually contradictory and trace back to vendor marketing rather than to any analyst house or regulator. We do not use them.
What we do not do
We do not rate firms, rank them, or run affiliate links. We do not characterise any company’s intent, honesty or conduct — not as an aside, not as an inference, not as a question. We report what published documents say and what they permit; we do not assert how a firm applies its own terms.
Pending litigation is described as pending, with the docket number and the current procedural stage. An unresolved legal theory is never presented as an established finding.
Corrections
If a figure here is wrong, or a term we quoted has changed, tell us. Corrections are published as an update to the article plus a dated changelog line — we do not silently edit. Firms named in any article have a standing right of reply and we will publish a response alongside the relevant passage.
Corrections and right-of-reply requests: research@upme.com
Written by the upme.com research desk. Nothing on this site is investment or legal advice.
Sources
Every factual claim above is drawn from one of the documents below. Where a document has been superseded since the date given, tell us and the piece is corrected with a dated line.
- Source
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