I've always been technically minded. My first obsession was audio engineering and using technology to create music. I worked in the industry for several years, though it never paid well. I enrolled in a university audio engineering course to take things to the next level—only to realize the course content was far below what I had already learned on the job. After scoring 100% on every exam, I left and switched to an IT and Finance program.
It was there that I first studied options strategies, along with other finance and economics courses, and learned programming. The options module covered spreads, profit and loss graphs, the Greeks, binomial models, and Black-Scholes pricing. I was fascinated by how you could combine strategies to create almost any desired risk/reward profile.
At the time, options seemed exotic, institutional, and far too risky for retail traders. I never imagined I knew enough to trade them seriously. The few times I did trade options, I stuck to simple long calls and lost most or all of the premium. Like most people, I thought options were too complicated and best left to professionals and hedgers.
I took a job at a new media firm writing internet-based systems, all the while telling myself I was really a sound engineer and would eventually return to that. About ten years later, I finally admitted I was a programmer, not a sound engineer.
My IT career spanned new media companies during the dotcom boom, investment banks, and three brokerages—where I gained valuable exposure to markets and trading from a back-office perspective.
Many technically minded people (mostly men) entered software engineering as a default career because they didn't have any clear alternative passion. After the dotcom hype faded, IT became a somewhat boring and thankless office job — a means to an end rather than a true calling. Many of us constantly discussed our “exit strategies.”
Trading is an obvious choice because of the strong overlap in mathematical, analytical, and systems-thinking skills. It also offers the dream of location independence — the ability to work from anywhere and choose your hours. Developers tend to be fast learners who enjoy problem-solving, debugging, testing, and optimization. I also saw many move into property development and investing for similar reasons.
I started trading during the dotcom boom while working at a new media firm called iXL. When the company went public on Nasdaq, we each received $10,000 worth of stock options. As the value rose quickly, I began watching iXL and its competitors closely. It felt like a one-way bet, so I started buying shares in other new media and tech companies — chasing the biggest movers on the Nasdaq.
One day I bought a company I had never heard of simply because it was the largest one-day mover. The next day that position was up $13,000. I even delayed buying a house because I thought my deposit would perform better in the market.
I turned $40,000 into $160,000, but then gave most of it back on the way down. I finally sold everything for a small overall loss. Shortly after I exited, the market continued to plummet, so at least I preserved most of my capital.
That experience gave me the trading bug — but it also taught me I needed to be much smarter. I realized I needed the ability to short as well as go long, and I needed a proper, testable system.
That led me into spot forex. I built Expert Advisors in MetaTrader, backtested strategies, and chased the “perfect” system using every indicator under the sun. I spent countless hours in forums and courses, waking up early for the London open and staying up late for the Asia session. I invested in commercial bots and even got work colleagues involved in after-hours bot writing and testing projects.
Eventually, repeated account blow-ups and frustration with retail trading realities left me cynical.
A turning point came when I connected with a trader named Chris (Trading Naked). He introduced me to his strategy of selling 45 DTE strangles on futures and rolling the untested side. That led me to his mentor, and eventually to Navigation Trading.
I tried calendars for a while but left to trade stocks again on the strong rebound after COVID. After making another small fortune and giving most of it back again, I returned to Navigation Trading more seriously as a pro member around the time daily expirations were introduced.
I moved my remaining capital (around $88k) into Tastytrade and achieved a 330% return in my first full year of 0DTE trading — finally keeping the profits. No overnight risk and the ability to be directionally neutral were game-changers. For the first time, I truly believed in the edge and had found a style that suited my temperament. (Note: 330% return was likely achieved because 0DTE options were still relatively new and significantly overpriced at the time. I was trading with high leverage, which is manageable on a smaller account but not something that should be maintained as the account scales.)
My core strategies revolve around Iron Condors with various stop-management approaches:
The US market opens at 2:30 pm my time, so mornings are dedicated to gym training, life admin, writing apps, backtesting, and other business tasks.
I'm usually at my desk 30 minutes before the open to review Discord, check overnight positions, futures, key levels, and expected moves. Lately, I've been using Spot Gamma heavily — reading the founder's notes and analyzing the gamma picture to gauge daily conditions.
I listen to the Navigation Trading morning livestream and an ICT (Inner Circle Trader) group stream to build a market narrative. If the setup is compelling, I'll take directional trades on SPX, NDX, or /MNQ and individual stocks.
The rest of the day involves monitoring TradeSteward bots, checking Spot Gamma and 0DTE SPX flow for ELMO entries and directional hedges. I take screen breaks but always return for power hour to monitor market-on-close (MOC) numbers and manage positions into the close.
I'm actually busier now. There's constant pressure to learn, test, monitor, and improve. In some ways, it can be healthier to have a regular job and trade in the gaps. It's harder to manage the obsession when trading is your full-time focus — more screen time doesn't always equal more profit and can sometimes reduce decision quality.
That said, I don't regret the move. I went from being bored most days to never being bored. I'm also fortunate to have a strong community of talented, like-minded traders around me.
Trading can be lonely, but I feel like I have a great team of people I talk to on a daily basis.
Psychology is the biggest factor in long-term trading success — along with position sizing, which itself stems from good psychology. Trading is a battle against yourself more than it is against the market.
The same setups that work for one person can fail for another due to fear, FOMO, overconfidence, or tying self-worth to P&L. Success requires detaching your ego, treating trading like a business, and accepting randomness and sequence risk. You must follow your process even when it feels painful. Good trades can still lose money, and you have to become comfortable being a good loser. Discipline, patience, and process-over-outcome thinking are essential.
Trading is a skill that can absolutely be learned. The famous Turtle Traders experiment proved that complete novices could be taught to trade profitably. I've seen it happen first hand many times in our community.
While some people may have a more naturally suited emotional temperament, trading is highly counter-intuitive. Our brains are wired to avoid losses and seek certainty, which works against us. Most of us also carry limiting beliefs and biases that need to be unlearned.
Long-term profitability isn't just about winning — it's about surviving drawdowns both financially and mentally.
One of the issues with trading is there are no barriers to entry. To become a doctor or a lawyer, you need years of training and qualifications. To be a trader, you just need an account. The process therefore consists of learning the hard way — getting burned enough times to develop genuine respect for the market and do the deep psychological work. Maybe some people never got burned, but I have never met one of those people.
Technical skill helps, but emotional control and consistency matter more. Stay process-focused and enjoy the journey. For me, shifting from limiting beliefs (“I'm unlucky with money,” “Trading is too hard”) to empowering ones had a profound impact.
What this coaching is: I'm not a “professional coach” — I'm a professional trader who has enjoyed some success after many hard lessons and loves talking about trading and teaching others.
Having traded 0DTE since 2022, I can share real-world experiences: what has worked for me, what hasn't, and the lessons learned along the way. Our sessions are discussions about pros/cons of different approaches, trade-offs, position sizing, risk management, and psychology.
We can build a plan tailored to your account size and risk tolerance. We'll explore where you might be getting stuck psychologically and discuss practical topics like backtesting, trade types, stops, profit-taking, and mechanical vs. discretionary decision-making. I can share current strategies, Spot Gamma insights, and help you determine what might suit your style.
What this coaching is NOT: I won't give you magic entries, tell you exactly what to trade each day, or promise you'll never lose. This isn't a “copy my trades” service or pure chart-reading course. It's about building your own realistic edge with proper expectations.