- What it is
- A gathered set covering one order: its record, the window it was given, what you wrote, and anything the other side stated.
- How you get one
- You assemble it out of material you were already keeping, in one sitting, shortly after the order starts looking unusual.
- Where to keep it
- Together and separate from your general files, so the whole set for one order can be found in a single place.
- How it goes wrong
- Pieces are collected at different times from different places and quietly contradict each other on dates.
- What fails without it
- You argue from impression, and impression loses to anybody holding a dated line, including when you are right.
- Time to acquire
- One sitting if the underlying records exist, and impossible if they do not.
An argument with a clock attached
The defining feature of a dispute is not the disagreement. It is the deadline. There is a period during which anything can be raised and after which the matter is closed regardless of who was right. That period is usually shorter than people assume and it starts running before anybody has decided there is a problem.
Which means the assembly work has to happen early, at the point where the situation is only mildly odd. Waiting until you are certain there is a problem burns the part of the window you would have used to put the material together.
It is a gathering job, not a creating job
If the earlier pages of this stage were followed, there is almost nothing to produce here. The order record exists. The window note exists. The message copies exist. This page is the act of putting those in one place and noticing what is missing before the gap matters.
If they do not exist, this page cannot help. There is no method for producing a dated record after the date. That sounds harsh and is simply the situation.
| Piece | Where it comes from | Common gap |
|---|---|---|
| The order itself | Your own transcription made on the day | The identifier was copied by eye and is one character out |
| The agreed timing | The window note written at the same moment | Nobody wrote down which event the count started from |
| What you said | Your own copies of sent messages | Only the ciphertext was kept, so the words are gone |
| What they said | Received messages, still where they landed | The account was reset and the inbox went with it |
| Anything published | A saved copy of a notice, with its save date | It was read at the time and never saved |
The tone of the pile matters
Material assembled calmly reads differently from material assembled in a panic. Dated lines written before anybody was arguing carry weight because they obviously were not written to win. A reconstruction produced the same afternoon as the complaint carries none, and a reader can tell the difference immediately.
This is the practical argument for the whole stage. Boredom is a feature. The best evidence you can hold is a note somebody wrote because they always write notes, about an order that at the time looked completely ordinary.
How the pile goes off
It goes off with the deadline. Once the window in which anything could be raised has closed, the material is history and holding it has costs and no benefit. It also goes off internally, when pieces collected at different times disagree about a date, and a set that contradicts itself is worse than a thinner set that does not.
The check is to read the whole thing through in one pass, in order, and see whether it tells a single story. If two pieces cannot both be true, work out which one was written closer to the event and mark the other as later reconstruction rather than deleting it.
What the pile does not contain
Not screenshots of the market interface as a substitute for a written record, and not anything you produced after the disagreement started that presents itself as contemporaneous. On the question of what an outside source can and cannot settle, independent sources sets out the general shape. Once the matter is closed, retiring an item covers getting rid of the set properly.
Questions that come up
When exactly should I start assembling?
At the point where the order stops matching the window you wrote down, or earlier if something specific looks wrong. That is deliberately before you are convinced there is a problem. Assembly is cheap and reversible, the deadline is not, and there is no cost to having put a set together for an order that then resolves normally.
What if I am missing one of the pieces?
Then note the absence in the set itself rather than leaving a hole. A line saying that no window was ever stated, or that the sent messages were not kept in readable form, is honest and holds its shape. A set that quietly omits its weakest point reads badly to anybody who spots the omission, and you will spot it yourself at the wrong moment.
Does keeping this material help if the market itself goes away?
Not in any way that recovers an order, and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise. What it does is leave you with your own account of what happened rather than nothing at all. That matters for your own record keeping and for deciding what to do next, which is the subject of the exit plan.