How the site is funded
Round Lot is paid for by its publisher. It carries no advertising, no sponsored placement, no paid inclusion, and no affiliate or referral arrangement of any kind; there are no tracked redirects anywhere in it, and no platform, issuer or data provider has paid to be named, compared or described. Nothing a reader does after leaving a page produces revenue here.
That is worth stating plainly because it is unusual for pages of this kind, and because it explains an editorial choice that would otherwise look like evasion. A comparison table here ends without a winner, and a mechanism is described without a recommendation to use it, because there is nothing on the other side of the decision. Where a site earns from a click, the ranking and the revenue point the same way; removing the revenue is what makes it possible to leave the ranking out.
Where the figures come from
Mechanical claims are written from primary sources: exchange and clearing-house documentation, regulatory rule text and investor guidance, the standardized options disclosure material, and companies' or platforms' own published filings and schedules. Where a page describes a published framework, whether the nine Piotroski criteria or the Altman coefficients and their zone thresholds, the original definition governs, and any adjustment is called a variant rather than presented as the framework itself.
Platform figures carry the date they were read, next to the table they appear in. Anything on this site is only as current as that date, and a dated figure is honest in a way an undated one is not. For pricing, permissions and account terms the provider's own schedule is authoritative; this site is a description of how those things work, not a substitute for reading them.
Worked examples use constructed numbers
Every example on the site is built from round, invented figures chosen so the arithmetic can be followed and checked: a strike at 50 and a premium at 3 rather than 47.82 and 2.61. The arithmetic is real and reproducible, which is the point of showing it, while the prices are not quotes and are not meant to resemble any particular security. Where a calculator appears, such as the payoff calculator, it computes the same relationships live from whatever inputs are given to it, and it fetches nothing to do so.
Corrections
Corrections are made on the page, and a page that has been materially corrected says so rather than changing silently. The most useful report identifies the page, quotes the sentence, and gives the source that contradicts it; the contact page explains that in more detail. Reports that a figure has gone out of date are as welcome as reports that one was wrong, because a reference of this kind ages in specific, findable places rather than all at once.
Which platforms appear, and why
Platforms are named when they usefully illustrate one of the five axes a comparison runs on. That is an editorial judgment about clarity, made without any commercial input, and it means the tables here are deliberately short: a handful of well-checked examples shows what an axis measures, where forty rows copied from a spreadsheet would only look thorough. Appearing in a table is not an endorsement, and being absent from one carries no judgment at all.
Data, tracking and third parties
The site runs no analytics, sets no cookies of its own and has no accounts. Fonts and images are served from this domain rather than from a third-party network, and the calculators do their arithmetic entirely in the browser; figures entered into them are never transmitted or stored, and reloading clears them. The privacy page covers this in full, including what a web server necessarily sees in order to answer a request at all.
What this site is for, and its limits
Round Lot explains how the equity and options markets mechanically work: what a contract obliges, what a filter removes, and what happens between a click and settled ownership. It is not a broker, an adviser, an exchange or a regulator; nothing on it is a recommendation, a forecast or personalized advice, and it cannot know a reader's circumstances, jurisdiction or tax position. Its useful role is helping a reader work out which question to ask, and then ask it of the provider, the filing or the rule text, which is where the authoritative answer lives. About this site sets out the scope and the method in more detail.
Questions about how this site operates
Who pays for the pages on this site?
The publisher does. Round Lot sells nothing, takes no commission on anything a reader might go on to do, and has no commercial relationship with any platform, issuer or data provider named on it. That arrangement is the reason a comparison here can end without a recommendation: nothing about the outcome changes what the site earns.
How current is a figure on a comparison page?
As current as the retrieval date printed beside it, and no more. Commission schedules, approval tiers and market rules change on their own timetable, so every table carries the date its figures were read. Where a decision has money attached, the provider's own published schedule is the authoritative source and is the one to check.
What happens when a page turns out to be wrong?
It is corrected on the page rather than quietly replaced, and a page that has been materially corrected says so. Mechanical claims here can be checked against a primary source, which means being told a page is wrong is genuinely useful rather than merely awkward.
Why do some platforms appear and others not?
Editorial judgment about what illustrates an axis, and nothing else. Appearing in a table here is not an endorsement and absence from one is not a verdict; the comparison exists to show what the axes mean, which needs a handful of examples rather than a complete market.