 Welcome back to the Trade Hacker Mindset podcast. In today's episode, we got a special guest. Mark Anderson is with us. Trading the markets can be difficult to master and seemingly just out of reach. Professional traders have a secret. Trading requires total mental and emotional control. It requires the Trade Hacker Mindset. All right, Mark, what's going on, my friend? How are you? Fantastic. Just another beautiful day in the market. I'm glad we have more Mondays after the holiday season and also just kind of preface this. I'm talking about personal trading, not a direct relation to my fund. I'm not a financial advisor. So anything I say should be taken as investment advice and all legal mumbo jumbo. But aside from that, I'm definitely excited to dive into more about you and everything and just specifically about myself as I'm predominantly a zero DT trader running ahead from that and also trading retail accounts on the side started as a basically construction worker picking up on zero DT in 2020 and have had 17 consecutive quarters of profitability in my personal account and just been clicking along with that. I also, you know, I'm really into some certain aspects of how I identify the trading and shorter duration options as well. Awesome. Well, that's good stuff. And so you've been, you've been in the navigation trading community for probably what five, six months? Is that about right? Yeah, five to six months. I stumbled upon you guys a while back. I'm basically on every discord kind of across the zero DT community and you know, the main thing with getting good at trading the way I look at it is if anyone played sports, it's basically you doing backtesting as practice, you deploying set strategies and what size is basically playing time and then your results are obviously the scoreboard and the win loss. Love it. Yeah, I'm a big. I love I love the sports analogies because there's so many parallels to trading. Yeah, let's do this. Before we before we jump into kind of your trading journey and some of the stuff that you're doing real quick. Fun fact about something else that you're involved in is you are a Tony Robbins coach. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so I actually went to a Tony Robbins event probably like four years ago with the sales team and you know, they basically described it to me like self development Coachella. I went to it. We like drank the whole time and but I was like, ah, this guy's kind of got probably some stuff to him. So then I ended up coming back and getting more into it. As I did that, I kind of realized that you know, I was thinking about doing things. I make a decision and then life would force me to do it. Then I'd go back to Tony Robbins event next year. Like, okay, I'm actually going to do it and then I'd follow through and actually achieve it. And then I was like, hmm, why am I waiting so much time in between all this stuff? I can make all these decisions without a crisis in my life and follow through with that type of fortitude. Then I signed up to do his platinum partnership, which is like four or five countries a week every month. Probably like 1500 hours of like kind of like deep self development stuff. And after I got more into that, you know, the secret to living is giving. So I got back into basically helping people with that and trying to have an impact on how it changed my life. And then next week I'll be doing one of my coaching and captaining for kids between 14 and 16. That may not be in the best areas of their life. We're going to go through like a five day process and event and then the kids are actually going to vote a couple of people from the team to have a scholarship to go in person to San Diego to their global youth summit. So that's like the main thing I'm interested now and still got a few more parts for the coaching and training until I get to that, but also love to talk about that as well. Yeah, that's amazing. You know, I think Tony Robbins has gotten, he's been around for so long and he's gotten so big that I think a lot of people who have not actually really delved into the details of what he does or been to one of his events, you know, they kind of have just a kind of stereotypical, you know, the stereotypical motivational speaker type, you know, thought around him, but man, the guy has been so successful for so long and and I and I was one of those people, you know, I was just kind of, you know, when somebody would say something, you know, it was intended to be motivational and it'd be one of those things like, oh, what are you Tony Robbins now? You know, you know, that kind of thing, but then I went to an event and man, it is, it is crazy. It's not, you know, it's definitely not one of those things where you're just sitting there and you're hearing, you know, motivational talks. I mean, you are jumping around and moving around and all kinds of crazy stuff and and so it's it's pretty powerful and there's there's a reason he's gotten so big and there's a reason that he's he's been so successful. So that's cool, man. So yeah, you said there was something else you wanted to kind of dive into on that. Yeah, I mean, it's just kind of nuts. Like they'll have you walk on fire. You know, we had it's very holistic. We had a love and relationships event, a business, you know, event, a spirituality event, science of success, art of fulfillment and in person, they do go pretty hard on it. Like, remember at day with destiny, it was like seven days and we were going from about nine a.m. to three a.m. every day. And the real thing that I think, you know, he's always adapted and that allows people to connect with it is it's amazing when someone is truly like trying to serve someone without judgment and integrity and honesty and love. And we often don't get that that often or may withhold that or whatever rules we have around what we need to get a return to have that, but that's always available. And once you're kind of opened up to someone walk in the walk and talk in the talk and then you apply it, it really starts to make changes with everyone else around you and yourself. So I think it's really powerful. Everyone should go to one. I think you could watch like his rise summit, which is like his three, three day thing on YouTube if you want to check it out, but always, you know, say those things and, you know, even if you're into religion or anything, it's like very similar like that. The actual act of religion is just practicing the empowering emotions like faith, gratitude and basically like a higher meaning and stuff. So same deal. Well, that's awesome, man. I can, I can see how that would, I mean, just being that close to it, being that involved and then taking something that you've learned and teaching it. I mean, you know, kind of like with me with trading, I've learned so much more about trading because I teach it. And I can imagine you, you have the same kind of situation from a, from that perspective now that you're coaching and you're teaching and you're, you're that close to it. I'm sure that's been a huge impact on your life. Yeah. And I mean, that's also kind of like a perfect segment of the trading. So basically the way I like to view the trading as well is there's your ability to recognize a pattern, which is like volatility, river stage or whatever that is. Then you're, there's your ability to utilize a pattern, which is like being some type of signal, being able to read more in depth and then there's being able to create some type of pattern, which is like the true innovation. And as we get further along in this and realized ball and five ball are closer and who knows what's going on in the market making world of zero DT and as technology goes like technology and everything's moving quicker. And the only people that are going to be able to continue to go with this are going to be, you know, individuals that are able to create their own patterns. And I think this is, you know, always going to be there and specifically for us as retailers, traders or not, you know, tens of billions of dollars of endowments and Wall Street hedge funds like the zero DT space is ours because the democratization of information has gotten down to a point where people can, you know, find it and utilize technology for inexpensive cost. But the fact is like, if you're just throwing around, you know, a couple million bucks, you can still use stocks within an open market on zero DT, which is something that billion dollar hedge funds can't do. Or if they did, it would be a statistical rounding here on their portfolio. So like that's why I kind of like to say focusing on that zero DT space is a great point for retail traders and then maybe like individual underlines that are inefficient. And also when I say zero DT, I would like to kind of expand people's mind as well because in my opinion, the point of zero DT is you're not carrying anything overnight and the fact that you can deploy capital five days a week. So whether that be one DT, zero DT, three DT, five DT or seven DT, I kind of all consider that zero DT trading when I refer to it going forward as well. Got you. And so I don't want to make any assumptions, but I assume you're a, you're a net seller of zero DT, right? I mean, you're not, you're not buying options. So I do buy, yeah, net, net, I'm always a seller. I will basically have some neutral Delta on some positions I have. However, I'm closer in expiration on my shorts. So as, you know, at the time I open the trade, I may be, you know, neutral a slightly long Delta, but once that trade progresses, it's going to be, you know, short Delta very quickly after it's put on. And how are you deciding on the positions that you're taking? Is it strictly volatility measures? Is it back testing at combination of the two or kind of what's a, give us a high level overview of how you're navigating that zero DTE space? So I look at it at a few ways. So first of all is I view it as a portfolio. So it's how trades go in with one another and how that basically affects my ability to profit. And then in regards to that, everything I do is back tested. I never do anything that's not mechanical. However, everything I trade is also based on some type of signal. So I think there's like a stark line between what people would call trend following and what people would basically call like signals. So trend following would just be like, you know, if it's, if it's up, I sell put since not really based on some type of back test, but if it's like, we're up 1% this day and I sell something like that is what I would consider signal. And I think a lot of people are also misguided kind of in the tronching community that will do like a dollar each side 12 times during the day and think that's diversification. And it's like, sure you are a little diversified, but you're going to be less diversified as volatility decreases. And also all of those positions are exposed to potentially one, you know, convex move during the day. But when I'm building my portfolio, I like to look at several things. My three main guiding lights are going to be the Mar, which is the percent return versus the drawdown. I like to use that as a proxy for capital efficiency and a proxy for risk reward. Then I look at premium capture ratio, which I use is basically a proxy for how robust that edges. So if there's something with a five to 10% PCR, that edge in my opinion could easily to road away. Whereas if you have something with a 30 to 40% PCR 25% PCR, that edge is most likely not going to road away. And then the third metric I use is basically days between new net and the highs because if I'm trading something, you know, I want to get rewarded for it in a relatively short timeframe. The longest I would ever go is basically 90 days. And I think those are kind of like the best metrics you could use because I haven't found one that it has all three, but it seems like they each complement one another. Whereas something with a super good risk reward that is super capital efficient, probably, you know, doesn't have the highest PCR and has quite a few days between new net like highs and then something with a really high PCR may have a high more, but it's going to be very a lot of days between new neck highs and then something that has a really low premium capture probably has a massive more and a map and not very many days between new like highs, but it has a low PCR. And then when I look at that within a portfolio, I'm running everything through Python. It's all empirically based with math and all that those things and all of my sizing is kind of a mix between systemic and selective and then I also like to play up and down the probability curve. So I have trades that are 95% success, 90% success, 80% success, 70% 60% 50% and hedges. And by doing that, you know, the deviation of within, you know, two degrees of statistical certainty for a 50% trade could be 20% with a 95% trade. It's probably only two to 3%. And the thing with zero DTE is the reason I'm able to, you know, basically 10% every quarter on that straight 45 degree PNL line is because there's so many occurrences that you're going to get your return and you're going to get your drawdown and that's within to standard deviation certainty and you're honestly probably eventually going to get to a three standard deviation probability, but I'm not necessarily as well as worried with that and that's why I buy heads and so you always so talk talk a little bit more about the hedging. So you're you're always hedging your positions or you just or when you say hedge, are you talking about utilizing different positions? Yeah, it kind of correlated or how do you think about that? What I like to do is I'm always managing my short leg on any trade I do just because I think it's more efficient on if there were to be a large move, you're going to get filled on a one leg order before you get filled on a two leg order and just fun packed out there. Anyone who's not as familiar with how order flow works. So basically through the OCC you're just in line. So if someone puts a stop on that's the same like double bid trigger at 932 a.m. and you put yours on at 1030 or you adjust your stop. You're now behind them in line, but if you're on a mid price, you're headed the person that put their order in at 932 so lowest level of hedging is that by only managing the shorts. I think you'll get a better fill will be in front of people in line and then your long leg can offset some of those losses if there's a super high convex move. I basically look at the long leg is a way to buffer any slippage on a fast move. So like you had a dollar slippage you should probably be able to get a dollar for your long leg outside of like the last half hour power hour. And then what I do as well as all basically hold hedges anywhere from lawn options that'll be from 3 to 14 days to expiration and those like if there's a big drop overnight, I'm kind of already sitting on some potential wins or if there's a very hard trending move like throughout the course of one or two days. I'm basically sitting on profit. So what I like to do is find something that has at least a 25% win percent and that basically has a one more in a break even expectancy and those tend to cancel out pretty well with zero day trades because at the market's not moving much those hedges will basically you know be offset by the faster decaying zero DT premium. And then if there were to be some massive trending market, I'm basically getting a bonus on holding those long options. So I don't have to sell you know 10% of my account and premium to have a 1% update when S&Ps up 1% or something. So I think those are very important to do. I do carry some risk overnight on the short side as well, but that's when I talk about kind of like the net delta. So that balancing of the two is very important and one example I'll kind of give that will drill down the fact that options are basically overstated is if you've heard of the concept of like kurtosis, it's basically saying that there's like far more moves within 0.5 standard deviations and stated and then there's fat tails, which there's far more moves that are larger and two standard deviations of magnitude. So by selling you know half standard deviation or one standard deviation options you should be able to profit from the short side, but when it does move those long options will help that and an easy way to illustrate that is like if you sell you know one day or seven day straddle you buy it and then you sell like anywhere from 15 to 5 delta wings. It basically has a positive expectancy, which empirically you're like how does this make sense? You know you're you you're defined risk your short one or long another and that's just basically an illustration of how robust that edge is the question is are you going to capture it and be efficient. So you're so you're so you're utilizing a little bit of short premium to offset the decay primarily overnight because during the day you're you're in your positions but and so you're you're using some longer dated options buying far out of the money to hedge and you're just using the short premium in a narrower range to offset that decay to equalize it as kind of a net net zero on that on that position unless you have a big move then you benefit is that. Yeah, so the way to think of it is like basically think of it as a sharp buffer. So like by having this hedge at a longer duration like the date is faster on the shorts because they're shorter duration is even though those hedges basically have a break even expectancy it increases the sharp on your portfolio. So your risk to reward is just improved by holding those that is because when you get hurt on a big move those are basically going to pay off on another way and that is also so like we talk about systemic and selective strategies and the curve fitters are selective. I believe that the only truly robust trade over an extremely long period of time that you can be systemic trading in every day no matter the environment is something like that that is based on you know an options theory in regards to short shorter duration has more data longer duration has less and basically like as that decay there goes off that'll bounce out and like Ron Bertino has a great course when he speaks about that you know in longer durations and how to use portfolio margin to basically you know offset the ability that your broker would let you borrow for those more conservative trades with less capital efficient. And are those are those longer dated hedges that you use or those just something like and I know it varies and you probably ladder into them or whatever but are those something you just you put on right before the close to hold every night and then you reset them every day or is a something or some of them you're just kind of longer duration you're just holding over the yeah all my hedges are going to be put on at the open or the close just because you know I think that's the best most unexpected time to where it makes sense to like by all basically and then in regards to the management of them I also think it's more in a back test of the two it's more efficient to constantly roll them than to hold something just like using a certain stop-off on short options there's an inflection point to where that curve basically flattens out that like it's no longer a useful hatch. So all of those intricacies are important ways to understand how you would correctly hedge your portfolio and it lets you be more capital efficient because it can offset your short options with your zero DT trades and the other thing that I would really like to enter as the people is let's say you're selling like a 75 cent option and you're buying a five cent wing like you're basically giving up 10% of your profit to buying that wing whereas if you have a long option that's a hedge completely offset your buying power and you just giving yourself 10 you 10% edge just from that that also buffers your sharp portfolio and like Corey Hofstein talks about this too but it's basically called return stack and so you can margin your Treasury 100% on TDA select get a 5% risk-free rate you can use long options that improve your sharp that offset zero DT trades and on top of that there's other products I highly recommend people checking this out as well. There's a product called like a 31 30 from Quantino and basically it holds the index and then we've leveraged shorts you know 30% of the comport components and index and it will hold unrealized long gains in the index if the market goes up and it'll realize short term losses from short selling of the components that are below the EMA it's all like computer so you're basically tax off harvesting on the way up or down was still getting the 8 to 10% return from mass and P so it's like we're just adding risk-free rates tax efficiencies and all of those things and I kind of like to relate those and even options I called tractor supply companies and towns that are too small for Walmart it's like there's niches that we can take massive advantages of either from laws and regulation from lobbying from the financial space or just from our size that we can use stop losses and you know zero DT and stuff so that's free money and everyone should be taking advantage of that once you get to size and it makes a massive difference because you're compounding this 256 days a year and the example that I like to get is if you make 48% a year you make 4% a month but if you make 4% a month which is what zero DT options you know could potentially do 4% a month compounded 61% year so just showing up and trading zero DT doing this taking the same amount of risk to everyone else and it's actually less because you're not holding overnight risk you're getting a 25% boost year one you know I'm saying and that's going to be convex and basically be a 2x boost year two and that's the predominant pattern of zero DT and trading and you can pick your route with options that whichever way the market's going you can still profit. Yeah that's awesome well said I mean you really articulated that well too that's that's great you said you said one thing I want to I want to circle back on you said a lot of your zero DT or all of your zero DT positions are based on a specific setup. When you say that are you always going in Delta neutral or are you doing directional zero DT trades as well. So I've got a few ways to go about it. I also don't think Delta is the best proxy and again we go back to patterns. So like if I trade a dollar often on each side and on and I make them 50 wide on my put side I'm buying a 10 cent wing on my call side I'm buying a 5 cent wing. So like the volatility risk premiums already off and then on top of that there's more skew on the downside when I say skew the way I like to relate this is the most accurate price or of moves within the market which is shown to be overstated is the at the money implied volatility and this is not the VIX that's the strike of that the money implied volatility and there's basically no difference between the put side and the call side and then further out of the money options have more of an implied volatility at that strike and then on the call side it kind of has a smile to where it's basically the same as at the many options. So if you were to sell that was you know two dollars or one dollar on each side and the strike for the put side is in 18% implied volatility and the strike on the call side is a 16% implied volatility. You're not actually Delta neutral so I'm basically always leaning to the put side on having more whether that be I have four puts two calls I sell an extra dollar on the put side and then the puts for the same premium is usually also further out of the money. So as a trade ages that basically becomes a different aspect but in regards to the signals and how I like to look at them is different market environments provide different opportunities and unless they're married with a long option there's going to be problems with that. So if we have a 15 VIX there's less implied volatility and there's less stew than there is when there's a 20 VIX and in regards to that there's also less premium and there's less options later in the day. So with the 20 VIX we had six and a half hours to take viable trades with a 15 VIX we may only have three hours. So that is the you know predominant proxy for it and that varies a little bit that 85% of that one straddle based on data is the most accurate for 0 GT but we can basically blanket that and I view there's three times for trade opportunities that I look at that's the open that's basically the euro close or the lunch and then there's power hour which are hedging obligations. So when I'm breaking down these trades initially to start at the open I basically know that like this is the most uncertain predictor of volatility during the day. I basically have no idea what I'm doing. So I'm almost always Delta Neutral obviously usually leaning towards the put side and also the big handicap of stuff at the open and the big reward of the open is if you take it all the way to expiration and the market doesn't move it pays very well but you're exposed to that market move basically the entire day. So I like to pair both of those types of strategies and once I go and look into it I'm going to base like what are signals that do that well. So a simplest signal is I like to talk about the Monday and Wednesday effect. I don't believe the Thursday effect. I'm not a curve fitter but for example today I don't know what the sad is don't quote it on me but it wasn't like you and Claire's book. It's like 95% of VIX options expire out of them. So today we open up ball came out from you know Tuesday CPI and 15 strike VIX has the most open interest. So like I know like sure we could ping pong up and down but like we're probably not going to have to sell off today being Wednesday at the open so like I'm already comfortable with leaning towards the put side and if the market turns slightly down I'll probably add more to that put side in when we talk about the signals I have to also explain it so I can make sense why Wednesday works. I can't make sense why Thursday doesn't work other than like it's 20% of the week and there are probably some really bad days just from volatility or news events because volatility and pricing in isolation is very valuable and easy to take an edge of but the second there's actual market movement from some type of news announcement I'll just throw out basically all my signals and then also the way options are priced it's like going to the upside it's much easier to hedge and it's also much easier to make money because people normally you know sell calls and then they buy them back whereas on the put side people roll down their puts and then there's that volatility feedback loop which is like volatility spikes up dealers need to sell more futures to hedge which causes the market to go down and then it moves down faster and pricing expands rapidly we're on the upside you know dealers are short selling their hedges that were long and it's basically compressing that movement slightly so once I establish that aspect of just knowing about options in general I'm then looking at indicators so EMA is not a great indicator just because I don't think it's robust because price can you know slightly move for like two minutes and screw you up whereas percent up or you know how much the VIX moved overnight especially if that was from a news event is a is a pretty good proxy for the signals that I like to choose from and I think you know we've seen some of that in the community and then you then establish guardrails on that so like we know our theory we're back testing it you know what we're looking for and then we kind of a set guardrail so like if the market is up one percent selling any type of put work if the markets up half a percent like you probably actually want to put a cat on you know potentially selling some call stuff maybe I like one and a half percent or the VIX is down whatever because we could still be ripping up to that whereas like another thing I like to say to is like to the downside I'll usually just that's a signal just not to trade because balls going crazy pricing is all weird like slippage is usually worse liquidity is worse so to the downside I predominantly don't use very many signals unless it's middle of the road downside. Gotcha. Interesting. Well we can we can talk a little bit about your hedge fund and and whatever you are comfortable with talking about we can or or you know if there's something you'd prefer not to discuss that's that's cool too but really this could go either your personal side or the hedge fund. You mentioned utilizing Python and you know that some some automated programs that you use is everything that you do automated with their DTE or do you also manually use discretion in certain environments. I will use discretion for taking off hedges and I predominantly do that because I'll kind of marry a short strike I'm not too concerned with that and also monetizing hedges since it doesn't happen as often you know what's going on is more of an art than a science and everything I'm doing is automated just because I think that 80 percent of people's mistakes is their psychology so the less you could be in front of a computer the better like that's just again that's free lunch that you can basically just pick up in regards that and the way I kind of like to look at you know how I'm going to manage that or with Python also with Python it's like there's a plug-in to Excel Microsoft 365 so I don't know how to really type Python I could just use the plug-in for Excel so that buried entry again again is basically gone if you're willing to spend three hours to learn Excel but that's a roadmap on what is applicable and it's honestly not even the most accurate thing on earth because like I've run optimal sharp on Python and then I've just sized up manually and all these programs basically have assumptions like sharp is assuming everything is basically I think it won the Nobel Prize everything is basically just a stock it can only go up and down you know they're all just as capital efficient for one another and that's obviously not true and that mistake is amplified and that assumption is amplified by 250 trading days a year so understanding all that as a guardrail and then being able to apply you know a worst case scenario is a very important aspect when you're sizing all that stuff gotcha and so are you are you trading your own personal stuff on the side or are your funds inside the hedge fund how do you how do you kind of manage that whole difference yeah so I am within the hedge fund I do have about 25% of a fund is my capital and then on the side I'm actually doing what I call the 401% of my 401k I may blow it up but I basically have like a 200 grand 401k on the side and my goal is to make 401% on it this year through trading zero DT and the reason I do that is because yeah a lot of people have a misnomer with oh options are risky or people just love volatile stocks like you know because most people just throw a dart at the wall and one out of a thousand buys and then video call at the low and they make 10 million bucks and that's how most people make money with options or they just buy a really volatile asset like Bitcoin and there's going to be an even distribution of people that make insane amounts of money and people that basically lose money whereas what I'm trying to say is you know like I said made money in 17 consecutive quarters I've done at least 10% and that's just because that's that 45 degree line and based on math however I like if you're okay with a 50% drawdown like volatile assets you know not to pick on Bitcoin is just with coming in my mind you could do 400% and have a better risk adjusted reward and I could tell you I could make 400% if you're okay with a 50% drawdown too. I was going to do that in the fund. I have a low volatility target and stuff but that is the real aspect of mastery that I like to point out to people is that you know it's really riding your own path and people often don't understand the risk that they're taking for the reward especially when we're a bull market or the government's dumping money into the economy. No one knows who's swimming with their shorts off until that rolls over which is just a much longer time frame than you know zero DTE staff which like I said you're going to get to that one or two standard deviation with like 90 days so I met someone you know on discord in the trading community that was basically look at this amazing indicator on puts and this has been since like the Gaza thing in October and I was like I could use the indicator that in you know Idaho on a day when its visibility is more than seven miles and it would look like the best trade on earth you know I'm saying so that's really where I like to push back on that stuff but I also want to show the power of these zero DTE options and it's like just from a personal story it's like I'm you know I made no money trading zero DTE I made 10 grand trading zero DTE made 100 grand trading zero DTE I made million trading zero DTE I'm trying to make 10 million sure zero DTE and like just by doing that like that scale actually goes on in perpetuity once you have that mastery and not saying that it's easier everyone could do it but that type of consistency really is there in all the opportunities kind of within those tractor supply companies that in towns that are too small for Walmart's so that's how I like to view it as like we use empirical math like Python fancy Wall Street stuff and I'm getting more into like this quant stuff and networking people then we just use our general common sense and then we use backtesting and by having a mix of all those fours you can create a very profitable search for what basically what you're doing to make this money machine. Gotcha and so obviously with your personal account you're you're you're leveraging that you're you're shooting for bigger turns what's what's kind of the goal of your hedge fund from a volatility and performance standpoint. Personally, I think that a 6 to 1 Mar minimum 10% PCR and then I like to I'm saying you know kind of a 40% target just because depending on the VIX I'm doing Delta base trades which that can vary so I could basically hit that all the time and then targeting around a 5% max draw down. So those are basically the predominant returns that and my other thing like real return of funds like I'd love to basically empower people to have financial freedom because if you can make 40% a year you put a hundred grand in something that can down to 40% a year four years later you're going to be getting a hundred grand in income from it with that type of compounding and that is a massive life changer for people. Whereas I feel like there's a lack of integrity and motion to the financial spaces. It's like you ask your financial advisor when the markets down like what should I do and say oh you know in the long run in 30 years this happens it's like well if you make 8% a year and you know your account and inflation is 5% over 10 years especially after taxes your purchasing power didn't change and now you're up creek with no paddle whereas like I'm like oh you'll get 10% in 90 days you'll at least know if you're foolish if I'm full of shit you're on the path with and you know three months and like but you could also basically have that freedom within four years. So I think that is the huge disclaimer with all that and the other thing too is I think everyone should basically like giving their money you know like I ties 10% of basically everything I make within the fund and personally like first thing I give is basically like stop child sex trafficking and stuff and I think a lot of people should empower that because it's like if the government asked you a we're raising taxes by 10% like you bitch you've known but you pay it and then kind of by leaving that scarcity of tying it to something else or like helping these other people and doing it with like your integrity you're carrying your kindness and being up front of what that is. That's what I really want to bring to the financial space and this democratization of information and ability to have all these rules and regulations that these massive billion dollar Wall Street firms lobbied they're available to the common man now and there's a bunch of great ways out there you can harness it even through different assets other than a zero DT hedge fund also will let you take your 401k from a prior employer you could invest in private equity you could invest in you know people's life insurance policies that will never go up and down and by having all this ability out there and this getting monetized to smaller and smaller parties there's an absolute financial revolution that was lit off by 2020 but everyone I think is still just focused on the shiny objects of what's the next Nvidia what's the next chip stock what's the next game stock whereas if you can compound money at 20% a year and you can save 20% of your income no one should be working till after their 40 you know and like I'm proof of this like I was a construction worker making 60 grand a year and now you know I'm a hedge fund manager making over 10 times that didn't take that long it's not I'm not saying it was easy but there's a bunch of aspects of that where you could have other people look after your money and like the biggest example I give is if Apple sells a million iPhones and hits their you know earnings report the market votes that up and down what that multiple is they could say we can't get this interest rates go up and you're participating in this voting mechanism however if you were invested in some private equity firm you know as a limited partner you're not doing anything but some accountant comes in and they say okay everyone hit their earnings in your portfolio we assign a 5x multiple this and irregardless of what interest rates are what's going on in the economy that's not voted up and down and the thing is like that can suck because you don't go up 300% like Nvidia in a year but that massive compounding is huge you beneficial and then if you could take off 20% of your taxes on top of that which is your largest expense in life now you're actually on the path to wealth and that's my big thing with this whole navigation thing and other trading communities and whatever that is it's like you it's not trading options it's everything else around it that will actually get you there and it's that skill that's going to age in all regards of it and basically like I tell people is your goal should just be to get 20 grand a month notional you know which is dollars not necessarily a percent return that can vary for people and once you're there you're cooking with grease now you're really on that starting to be you know curve of giving your way to financial freedom. Yeah I couldn't agree more there's there's so many just life skills that come out of learning to trade options you know you're learning to take risk you're learning to manage risk you're learning to think in probabilities it makes you a faster decision maker and everything you do right because you know as traders we're like here we go got to make a decision right there's yeah there's you know sometimes you don't have time to ponder things if you're especially if you're trading zero DTE so I love that I love that conversation because I think it's so powerful it's not just about making money trading options there are so many more benefits that that bleed into other areas of your life that's just priceless going back going back to one thing you said so we didn't hit hit on this at the beginning and I wanted to talk a little bit about it but dude how do you how do you go from a construction worker to trading like what where is the bridge there what would happen. So like I'd always been interested in investing so right when I got out of college I was commuting a huge amount in the Bay Area I was doing like three hours a day so I was listening to stuff podcasts whatever on my way home and my dad had you know been trading options since the 80s when they were listed in the newspaper so I was always familiar to basically what options is but I tried to warn Buffett thing you know everything was just correlated to the SPX and like M2 so it doesn't matter that's too slow like you really want to say for 40 years yeah and then I had originally gotten into basically tractor supply companies and things that are too small for Walmart with real estate so I gotten into like bigger pockets I was making a big salary in the Bay Area living in a really small spot and saving a bunch of money and I basically could buy quad flexes with traditional loan terms and you could use the rent to basically get more debt and there wasn't competition from anyone big because they're competing with government finance debts to individuals and people with kids don't like living in quad flexes is their first home because it's not the most inviting place and it doesn't look very good. So basically what I would do is I would buy quad flexes in the nicest possible area could that were just bad like terrible and I'd use a bunch of debt to finance them through the government and then I would rent them out to section 8 tenants which are like all great people they need somewhere to live they have a house and goucher they're great tenants and like eviction rules are different and they'll basically pay you 15% of them above market rent in that area code. So basically by doing no value ad I could go from making four grand a month in rent to making seven grand a month in rent just from that you know conglomeration of it. So I did that for a while and then I was like real estate said I bought two properties. I was like dabbling in options a little bit. I was running you know a very involved 90 day gold oil TLT SPX Q's like profit take hedge thing and then I was going to get my refi out in like 2021 from my low interest rate home that boomed and I couldn't get this refi out basically from the home because I was living in San Francisco roommates and the way the government looks at it even I had four roommates I was paying for a grand a month for rent basically so I couldn't get any money out of that and I'd like told my boss. I was like hey I'm moving to Texas. I'm going to start trading. I had gotten a job offer to basically sell like commercial real estate is a consultant with a biotech firm for like 250 grand and I was like no I am trading options. Russia invades Ukraine my account tanks. I lose like you know 25% of that account from just ball going up in that one day when they took over the power plan is really what killed me I couldn't get my refi out while that happens I had bed bugs and like one of the apartment complexes. It was so dirty I couldn't even ensure it it spread everywhere all my tenants left my entire life savings wiped out to fix up these apartment complexes the money I had saved all went into the hat I couldn't get my refi my dad was getting sick during all this I made a mistake at work that may or may not have a fireball offense but I pulled them out of you know already leaving and I got fired and couldn't get unemployment and was stuck to San Francisco ran basically went from like thinking I'd have a million dollars to being 40 grand and credit card debt while this is happening as my dad had like some health problems too. I was obviously hard but at that point is when I really decided like I said I'm going to do this I'm going to follow through and this is all during the Tony Robbins thing and I basically grind it out not doing that well like all of you in there that may be new to trading options and I started to get more momentum I wasn't necessarily now I talked about this like it's good thing I wasn't a very happy person during that time and I basically got like a new remote you know intro levy level sales job in tech as all this happens making like 60 grand a year and I basically just worked all the time worked through that got momentum was able to sell these properties and that's basically you know the story of how I went from making 62 grand a million dollars in a year obviously my count like 30 X when I got you know apartment complex is worth of equity out during sale and was able to trade them but the thing is it's like having the enjoyment and the passion and the belief in yourself that it wasn't the money it was proving to yourself and instilling that certainty in yourself that you're able to do something like like that you know I'm saying and not giving up at that first notion or whatever and it's like I'm super glad that happy because I probably would have been really cocky and like living in Miami you know doing something that I wouldn't be proud of now if it was that easy so I really kind of look at that as the gift of all of it and going through that like putting your ass out on the line and business or relationship or friends or like there's some type of struggle in your life like that's really what you can hang your hat on as a person and it's going to be a part of you it's just all about giving a more empowering meaning to it and then it's like you can show up for people indefinitely better going in the future and you just walk different and you can notice that when you talk to other people in life now and that's basically like the path I'm on now and I've kind of focused like even though I'm in the zeros and money business I'm not going to pretend like making a bunch of money for myself or other people actually makes a difference it's what you're doing with that and making an intent for it as well and helping people that like frankly I kind of bet people that I may talk to the fund like I don't I don't really care if you just have money it's like I want to make sure like you're actually trying to do something with it or like you got some type of compelling future that you you want to use this for you I'm saying Wow that's that's a power that's such a powerful story man that I had when I when we spoke before I had I had no idea of that whole situation that happened but man in and so I mean just based on your depth of knowledge of how you're trading and and the sophistication of what you're doing versus what a lot of people are doing and you've only been really digging into this for three or four years right on the zero DG stuff. That's yeah I mean I mean that's really amazing. I mean it shows how committed you have really been for those few years. Yeah and the thing is it's all about tying it to something else but all the information is there and like I read a lot of literature that wasn't really applicable to trading zero DT but paid off in theory further down the road and I think a lot of people overestimate what they can do in a year or month and underestimate what they could do in a decade. So that's kind of yeah that's Tony Robbins saying isn't it. Yeah yeah yeah no I'm pulling quotes out here. Yeah no I've heard that for it. I couldn't remember if that was him. I think it is yeah. Yeah or the other one I like to and this is in general it's like you can you know you can fight for your limitations and keep them or you can you know fight for your possibilities and create them. So like you you choose you know what I'm saying. That's awesome. Well Mark I really appreciate your time. I mean I think so many people will really resonate or you know find value from your story and just from the knowledge that you've shared. So I really appreciate you coming on. Now you have your own podcast is that correct. Is that started or is that about to start. Yeah so I'm recording stuff. I think it's going to start with being more applicable to just people trading in general. So I'm building out my brand and presence and you know all things zero DT to be the predominant zero DT guys that's all going to be coming down the gambit here. If you you know follow me on LinkedIn or you know I'm going to have a more organized website here pretty soon to where you can sign up for newsletters and everything but I aspire to put out the mountain quality and integrity of your guys's information and that'll be coming out the game here. But if anyone wants to chat with me like I just love chat and options or things in general. So you know my website and VH capital management you can just schedule a call to just chat or whatever. I'm always happy to basically like look through someone's back testing or portfolio they're running and giving my time for free. I just like one on one personal things like this basically. So so MBH capital management is your is your company. What's the name of your podcast going to be. It's just we all about zero DZ options with Mark Anderson. So that's just awesome about 30 and then if you are in the navigation trading community is profile is just Mark Anderson so you can find him there. So man we appreciate I appreciate you having you as part of our community. You know I just I love connecting with smart people who are passionate about I mean not only trading but you know I mean your passion shows through and you know kind of wanting to just make this world a better place. I love that. So thank you so much for your time Mark. I appreciate coming on and I'd like to do it again. We're Steve I'll talk to you later. Appreciate so much sounds good.