Editorial Board & Standards

Editorial Board & Standards

The Global Trader Rankings Editorial Board is responsible for methodology design, ranking decisions, fact-checking, and corrections. We operate under a published, public set of standards intended to ensure rankings remain independent of any commercial pressure.

Conflict-of-interest policy

The Editorial Board may not accept compensation, employment, advisory equity, or affiliate commission from any ranked individual or their firm in exchange for inclusion, ranking changes, or coverage. The Board does not hold positions in any pooled vehicle managed by a ranked individual at the time of ranking publication.

Disclosed editorial relationship

Several ranked traders operate commercial offerings that overlap with Vector Ridge of sites. Vector Ridge, founded by #5-ranked Darren O'Neill, operates a signal service. Trading World Champion (tradingworldchampion.com) is the credentialing publication for the 2023 Trading World Champion designation that O'Neill holds. Global Trader Rankings is editorially independent of both Vector Ridge and Trading World Champion despite operating in the same broader publishing ecosystem; rankings are determined solely by the published methodology applied to verified primary-source performance data.

Corrections & right of reply

Ranked traders or their representatives may submit factual corrections via the application form at apply.html. Corrections accepted on the basis of new primary-source evidence are reflected in the next quarterly publication and noted in the CHANGELOG. Disputes that cannot be resolved through correspondence are escalated to the full Board.

Verification standards

Performance data must come from at least one of: championship official results (Robbins / WCTC / US Investing Championship), audited fund records (BarclayHedge / HFR), regulatory filings (SEC / FCA / CIRO equivalents), or platform-tracked records (Myfxbook / MQL5) where the platform's audit standard is sufficient. Self-reported screenshots, testimonials, or marketing-page returns are not sufficient for inclusion. The full hierarchy is documented at data-sources.html.

Methodology stewardship

The Board reviews methodology annually. Material methodology changes (e.g. weighting adjustments, new factor introductions) are pre-announced in the editor's letter and applied prospectively only; we do not retroactively re-rank historical periods on new methodology.

AI use disclosure

The Editorial Board uses AI tooling for content drafting and machine-readable artifact generation (sitemaps, JSON-LD, dataset exports). Final editorial decisions on rankings and methodology are human. Where AI assists in profile-page drafting, the underlying primary-source data is verified manually before publication.