How We Write

LAYER 0 publishes articles on trading psychology for day traders and prop firm traders. This page says who is responsible for them, what they cover, where the facts come from, and what to do when we get something wrong.

Who is responsible

Peter G. is responsible for everything published here. He's a trader, not a psychologist, a therapist or a financial adviser. Why he built LAYER 0 is in My Story. The articles draw on his own trading and on published research and books; the people whose work they lean on are listed in Who we learn from. None of them is affiliated with LAYER 0.

What we write about

Trading psychology only:

• •The decisions and the state of mind before a trade, during it and after it
• •Discipline, rules and limits, and why they hold on some days and not on others
• •Position size and risk as behavior: how much you can lose without it changing your decisions
• •The pressure of prop firm evaluations and funded accounts
• •Routines, journaling and review
• •When trading stops being trading and starts to hurt

What we leave to others:

• –Strategies, setups or indicators
• –Market analysis, predictions or trade signals
• –Reviews or rankings of brokers and prop firms
• –Tax or legal questions

The test for any topic: does it help a trader make a better decision, whatever their strategy is? If not, it doesn't belong here.

Where the facts come from

A claim from research links to the paper itself, usually through its DOI, and the article lists its sources at the end. Books are cited by author, title and year. We're adding source lists to the older articles one by one; the ones that still lack them are mostly practical pieces built on trading experience rather than on a study.

Where the evidence is thin, a single small study or one experiment, the article says so. Experience from trading is told as experience, not as a finding. Numbers about prop firms come from the firms' own disclosures or from reporting that names its data. When a popular number has no source we can find, we say that too, as with “trading is 80% psychology”.

What we never do

• •Tell you what to trade, or promise a profit.
• •Take money to mention a product, a broker or a prop firm. There are no affiliate links on this site.
• •Suggest that an author or researcher we quote endorses LAYER 0.
• •Present an illustrative example as a real user's result.

Updates and corrections

Every article shows when it was published or last updated. When we fix a factual error or replace a source, the date changes with it. If you find a mistake, a broken source or a claim that doesn't hold up, write to layer0firewall@gmail.com. Corrections go in, whoever they come from.

Education, not treatment

These articles are education, not therapy and not financial advice. If trading is affecting your sleep, your money or the people around you, talk to someone qualified: a doctor or a therapist.