Retail Trader

About the work

We are building a dataset of real retail trading behavior: complete brokerage trade histories, paired with the trader's own explanation of how they trade and why they made their biggest decisions. The data is used to study and model how individual traders make decisions.

This is a one-time task, paid a flat $400 on completion.

What you will do

1. Upload your trade history. Export your complete transaction history from your U.S. brokerage account using the broker's standard export, and upload it to our platform. It must cover at least 24 months and include every trade, with none removed. Remove your name, account numbers, address and other personal details before uploading.

2. Describe your trading style. Write a short summary (about 100 to 250 words) of your strategy, typical holding period, the instruments you trade and the platforms you use.

3. Explain your 5 biggest trades. Pick at least 5 of your most significant or influential trades, such as large gains, large losses or high-conviction calls, with stocks preferred. For each, explain your reasoning at entry or exit and what information drove the decision. Keep any reflection on how it turned out separate from your original reasoning. Each explanation must name a specific trade in your history, with the symbol, date, side and quantity matching that trade.

The writing takes up to about 1.5 hours.

Pay

• $400, paid once you have uploaded your full history and fully annotated at least 5 trades.
• Partial submissions are not paid: the upload and all 5 annotations are required.

Who we are looking for

• Location: United States only.
• Trading experience: at least 2 years of active trading on your own account, and at least 1,000 trades over that period (about 2 per trading day).
• Instruments: stocks; options count too.
• Broker: your account is with a U.S. retail broker, such as Robinhood, Schwab, Fidelity, E*TRADE, Webull or Interactive Brokers.
• Background: any. No minimum education and any field of study, from current college students to graduate-degree holders. Non-finance professionals, finance professionals and full-time traders all qualify. Current or former professional traders can take part using their own personal account only.
• Age: 18 or older.
• Willing to share your complete brokerage trade history, with no trades removed.

Not a fit

• Fewer than 2 years of history, or fewer than 1,000 trades
• Trading only through an account you don't own, such as a managed, employer or prop-firm account
• Trading mostly crypto or futures

Data license agreement

Taking part requires signing Mercor's Expert Content License Agreement, which covers how your trading history and annotations are licensed and used. You sign it as part of applying.