APTFAbout APTF: the psychology of forex trading
About the project, briefly: APTF is a reference on trader behaviour on the currency market. We start from the premise that advice without a price tag does not get followed, so every claim about behaviour here has arithmetic behind it that a reader can repeat on their own forex account.
Why another site about trading psychology
There is a great deal of material on this subject, and almost all of it is built the same way: a list of emotions and a call to control them. There is nothing to check in such a text and nothing to do with it — it changes not a single parameter of a trade.
We tried a different way. Every behavioural claim is translated into a number: a run of five stops is a 92 % probability at a 45 % win rate; doubling risk after a loss is a 50.6 % drawdown instead of 9.6 %; fifteen extra trades a month is 15.8 % of the deposit a year. A number can be argued with, recalculated and leaned on at the moment you want to break a rule.
What is here and what is not
Who writes
The materials are prepared by the APTF editorial team. The site has no «guru» figure: we consider a personal success story a poor argument in a subject where an individual result is random by construction.
Every material goes through three steps: a claim is checked against a source or a calculation, the number is recomputed independently of the text, and the finished page is read by a second person for promises and ambiguous wording. The dates of verification are given at the bottom of every page.
How we handle numbers
If a figure comes from assumptions, the assumptions are listed next to it. This applies to every calculation on the site without exception.
transparencyClaims like «90 % of traders lose money» we either accompany with a source or examine as unverifiable.
sourcesNot «our calculator shows» but an expression with the numbers substituted that can be repeated in a spreadsheet.
verifiabilityAn error found is fixed on every page where the same number appears, not only where it was spotted.
correctionsHow to check us on three claims
Trust in a material is tested not by a declaration but by a sample. Take three claims from the site and check them yourself — it will take half an hour and any spreadsheet.
| Claim | Where it is on the site | How to check it yourself |
|---|---|---|
| Five stops in a row at a 45 % win rate is the norm, not a failure | Losing trades in a row | Simulate 100 tosses with a probability of 0.55 and find the longest run. Repeat ten times |
| Doubling risk after a loss costs 50.6 % over five stops | The cost of revenge trading | Multiply (1 − 0.02)(1 − 0.04)(1 − 0.08)(1 − 0.16)(1 − 0.32) — you get 0.4944 |
| At 1:2 with costs of 10 % a system breaks even at 36.7 % | Break-even win rate | Substitute p = 0.367 into p × (2 − 0.1) − (1 − p) × (1 + 0.1) — you get zero to within rounding |
The point of the table is not the numbers themselves but the principle. A claim that cannot be recalculated at home either comes with the label «model» and a list of assumptions or does not appear at all. If you have found a third case, we have missed something; write to us.
The site's place in the network of projects
APTF is not a stand-alone blog but part of a network of references on adjacent subjects built on one engine. That explains why some topics are absent here: they are covered on neighbouring sites, and duplicating them would make things worse for both.
Trader behaviour on the currency market: emotions, discipline, execution errors and the price of every breakdown in money.
this siteAnalysis of strategies and signals, broker rankings, teaching technical analysis. Those are other subjects requiring a different kind of fact-checking.
outside the subjectThe engine, the design system, the rules for handling numbers and the ban on promises of returns. The content, the semantics and the calculators are each site's own.
a common foundationThe practical consequence for the reader: if a question concerns not behaviour but the workings of the market or of instruments, there will be no answer here — and that is better than an answer written without checking.
How the site is built technically
This is a static site with no database and no server code. The property is not cosmetic: it determines what happens to your data.
The numbers entered into the calculators are not sent anywhere: a script on your page computes them. We physically cannot see them.
privacyChecklists and the test are saved in the browser's storage and tied to the page address. Nothing goes to a server.
locallyThe only form on the site assembles the text of an enquiry and hands it to your mail program. The letter goes from your own mailbox.
nothing transmittedOne script builds the whole site from sources. An error is fixed in the source and rebuilt everywhere it appears.
reproducibilityThe flip side of this design: there is no personalisation on the site and there will not be. We do not know who you are, what you calculated or which pages you visited — and that is a deliberate choice, not an omission.
What the site is not
This is not a medical or psychological service. We examine trader behaviour and its price in money, but we do not provide help and do not make diagnoses. If trading is done on borrowed money, hidden from family or continued against your own decision to stop, that is the territory of a specialist in addictive behaviour, and it is stated plainly on the page about gambling and addiction.
There is also no individual investment advice here. The materials describe mechanics and arithmetic; the decisions about your own trades are yours.
Frequently asked questions
Why do the authors have no names and track records?
Because an individual's track record proves nothing on a sample that cannot be verified, and a name does not make a formula more correct. What has to be checked here is the calculations, and they are open.
Where do I write if I find an error?
To the contacts page — the form and the editorial email are there. The enquiries that get worked on fastest are the ones with the address of the material, the disputed figure and a link to a primary source.
How is the project funded?
The monetisation models in this subject and the rules by which we handle mentions of services are examined on the page about affiliate links.
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