My two feet on the ground. Two smaller, cuter feet. And 8 furry ones. Standing together, working on ourselves, our psychology. Amazing. I’m really proud to be here. Couldn’t have done it without the friendship of my player 2, working through the psychology of it. Been a treat to share in the journey. Wow. What a trip that was to get to this point.
Goal for quarter was 250k in funding, no paycheck, just get, and put it right back to work to scale as fast as possible. But I am shifting that to 100k with a focus on instead paying myself and doing something really cool with Ash. I’m passing challenges now. I’ve blown a good many up. It’s always when I’m emotional. Bad week. Get a little off kilter emotionally. Another account destroyed.
We call this “tuition” and it only takes a very small slip in objectivity to undo the gains for a lot of work. “Respect the Market” because it sure as hell has no problem running you over when you think the market isn’t doing what it should. What a great teacher. I see the market as a stone dragon. Immutable yet fluid in motion. It will not yield to you. You must yield to it.
I knew at the turn of year this would be the one. I could see it starting to click. I had a couple really big breakthroughs in my trading style that enabled me to start making massive bets. A really good quality position now I’m putting 10x my account on the trade. I’ve gotta get the confidence to put 100x notional on a trade. A few a year would be enough to start talking about 7 figure years. I put a good playbook together now. I’ve used every setup. A couple entries I’m going to replace with specific setups that I’ve been finding consistently give a trade.
The other thing I want to do is to move on to large-cap singles. Or possibly forex. I’ve been able to pick the markets and the times to trade the macro very successfully. I usually include BTC calls beside macro analysis because I have so many friends that trade crypto, but the correlation to the rate cut narrative wobbles. Sometimes BTC is the inflation hedge, or store of value like gold. (Today it’s more like gold as the markets drop) but actually BTC has been the most reliable market to move on the macro story as I see it.
Indices were bothering me for a while because the put/call walls and weird negative gamma effects creates weird instability and loss of price correlation to dollar as dollar demand shifted. I think that’s behind us now. The markets are getting butchered. Not AI tho. I’ve been trading DJI instead of my usual pick: NASDAQ. For macro plays here, NVDA is too frothy post ER, so I’ve been shorting the DJI since last Wednesday/Thurday getting it the whole way down. By tuesday I just found a short and held it until today.
10% challenges I’m knocking out of the park. I was over-confident for a stretch and ripped one up. I wanted to get two to funding to start. If I get in a run I find just making a new wallet and putting some capital in it, even if it’s small, will get me out of a rut. Can switch back and forth. Having a big and small account is a good way to size for the conditions. I think 250k funding is psychologically too much for me this quarter to keep as a goal. I need to reset a bit. I recognize that taking breaks is very important. Especially to learn and process all of the experiences, and digest your psychology. You also need to stop to strategize about other things in life. If it’s just work and trading like 60 hours a week, you’re very “not free.” You need to have some goals and targets, and you should be utilizing everything you can to reach those goals and keep yourself in good shape psychologically and motivated.
The challenges were cool because the market conditions aren’t hot. The first one I passed this quarter took me 33 days. The second one took me 11. My average Reward to Risk on all positions was 4:1 in the first one and is 5.8:1 in the second. I would bet on those stats 😉 Winrate is still low – 37%. Once I started to bet more aggressively, I saw my winrate drop and my RR skyrocket. Too many trades to find the one that sticks, but profitability and consistency are here. And better every day. I have to figure out how to get multiple accounts trading the same positions with different ratios of risk so I can accumulate a bunch of accounts and make sure there are some that are always there and running even. A spell of tilt makes it easy to blow one up. I should always have a challenge running and linked to funded accounts with size at 11. Size matters, all you need is one A++ setup a year even to live, so long as you have enough knowledge and experience to really go for it.
I just want to pay myself for a bit and do something with Ash. Been keeping the trading really tight and doing my best to stay clicked in to work and engaged. I’m generally not taking more than a position or two and being very selective about times. Early (6:30am) or right around 12pm to close (1pm.) PT. But it’s still a lot of work. I’m getting tired from the dopamine after another amazing week. When you’re winning all the time, your brain is dumping dopamine, it can make it really hard to sleep a full 7-8 hours. A lot of times I’m awake before my alarm because I know London session has clues in it about the day ahead.
Celebrating not taking trades means a lot now. Made 0 trades over the last weekend until Sunday night (Asia market open.) Mid day has no trades so I just know better than to hunt in the first three hours of the 9-5 “work day”. Realistically I work better at night so if I find something cool I just grab my laptop at night and make sure I’m putting in really solid focus time and feeling good about work. The risk is that I’ll procrastinate if not feeling engaged on a day. You don’t want the stress of trying to “catch up” in some way on your weekends. That stress-spiral of even a single bad/unproductive day can throw you off. If you see that happen, time to make some changes. You might be disengaged/not able to get in flow. And that’s usually because the tasks are either too boring or two difficult (or both.) Try to make a game out of your productivity to make it more engaging. I have a spreadsheet with how many pomodoros I run each day to try to game making good habits at work. It’s fun to think about and you’ll feel like you’re getting good work done. Why not become a 10x developer while putting the psychology skills you learn in trading to work? You know how to be amazing at anything now. It’s the same process. Analyze what you’re doing, journal your behaviour, become aware of why you’re doing certain thing. Quantify “work stuff”. And then find a way to change what you’re doing wrong. Iterate on it. Make a playbook for yourself like pomodoros or a morning checklist. I put a daily self check-in in my calendar and journal observations about my behaviour, motivation, emotions etc. You have the power to change the world around you to not be difficult or boring, but to make it all a gift that you learn and grow from. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. You don’t need to be too rigid. But you’ll make mistakes. Just ensure you’re aware and you learn from them.
The greatest gift that trading has gifted me is certainly not money. This is not a fast or easy way to make money. It’s the other stuff, the psychology and the level of challenge. It’s everest. When you see in your stats that you are undeniably, observably profitable, you understand what an incredible achievement that is. You are peak. You are in the 1% (stat: SMB retail trader survey) of people crazy enough and diligent enough to succeed.
k-xs 
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