 Welcome back to the Trade Hacker podcast. In this episode, we've got a special guest with us today, Meach. 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. What's going on, Meach? How are you, sir? Not much. Just got done. I'm just skiing a little bit. So that's part of like my situation is my situation isn't really mine right now. I work a job. I've got different stuff going on in my time constraints. Kind of constrain how I like to trade. So we'll probably get into that more, but I'm happy. I'm here and it feels like a little bit weird. Like I got some, what's it called? Not FOMO, but like where you feel like kind of fake, like you're on a podcast. I can't think of the term right now, but I feel like a faker. Like I don't know if I really should be on a podcast. I feel like I'm pretty new at trading, but I'm always spring. Like there's so much I don't know about that. I mean, everyone starts somewhere. So there's going to be a lot of people who are newer to trading than you. So definitely that's what it's called imposter syndrome. Got it. Got it. Here I am on a podcast talking about trading. And I feel like I just joined NT a short little bit ago. But yeah, other than that, everything's good. Very cool. Well, so if you're in our community, you know, Meach, he's active. He's always there helping people out if they have questions and things like that. So it's awesome to have you in the community, first of all. But take us, let's start here. Take us back to kind of how you first got started in investing or trading. Like how did you get to where you are in your current trading focus today? Yeah. So I think growing up, my parents are both educators. My mom is still teaching at this point. She's, she's taught high school, junior high math primarily. She actually taught me. So I took AP calculus with her and she was one of the best instructors I've had. And then my wife also had her for her, had her as a teacher. And I think my wife loved my mom so much that she married me just to get closer. That's great. That way my wife, my, my mom, before I was dating my wife, she was like, you know who you should like try and go after? You should try and go after Chelsea because she just so smart. And whatever. And so they have a nice little, I guess it's a little love triangle between the three of us. I think she's probably leaning more towards my mom, but I'm like the package deal, I guess. Does your dad feel left out or what's he doing? He's fine with it. He's doing his own thing. He's retired now at this point. So, but anyways, I say all that to say like, not that there's, like it's awesome to be a teacher, but I think the mindset that comes from kind of entrepreneur, like they also grew up, like my grandparents were like, they came over on the boat from Spain or they were, you know, in Vietnam. And so that kind of mindset of saving and scrimping and not wasting was kind of ingrained in them pretty hard, like my parents. And so I think that some of that carried over, not to the extent that it was for my grandparents where they're almost like hoarders, but like we save, we don't waste. And so that definitely got passed down to me where I like, it just makes me feel good to get a good deal. I don't know. People ask me like, what's your hobby? It's like getting a good deal. That's one of my favorite things, whether it's on Facebook marketplace or whatever, getting a good deal equates to basically buying low selling higher identifying value. Are you big? Are you a garage sailor? I do love me some fresh sales. My wife eats it because I'll come back with shit. Like, so a lot of the places that I've lived, there's a lot of turnover. And so every time someone leaves their house, there's a big pile of junk outside. And my favorite thing is going around during that season, taking the girls with the stroller and just going and picking through other people's junk. So I feel like I'm a, probably a lot of people have animals. We grew up with cats and they would bring home like the rat that they caught out in the field and be like, look what I brought you. That's how I feel when I come home. And while wife gives me this like disgusted look, like I don't want this junk. We already have enough junk. So I say all that to say, I grew up as a saver and like getting good deals and value has always been important to me. And so at a very young age, like I have no problem with delayed gratification. So I was able to save. I saved a lot. I would work jobs, just kind of odd jobs for family members and friends and save up all that money. I ended up going to school getting a full ride. So I didn't have to pay for school. So that was a huge, huge help. Would you get a full ride for academics or athletics or what was it? Everything all together. So I went to basically all that goes into the job that I'm in. And so they basically hired me for that role. And then I went through school with them. And then I served in that capacity afterwards for a certain amount of time. And I'm still doing that. But I'm basically paid my tuition. My work paid my tuition. And so basically saved my whole life. I've always been interested in invest in investing. I don't, I can't tell you like when it first started, but the earliest memory I have of like actually being super interested in investing was probably late high school, early college, probably around the time where I could actually open up an, like an investment account and really start digging into it myself. So I read lots of books on investing. And like, I've since kind of had a hard U turn from that approach because there were times where like, I tried different value investing. I think we probably all come from a similar cloth. Like, I'm very analytical. Like I'm major in mechanical engineering numbers make sense to me. Value makes sense to me, but the stock market isn't necessarily a values based. Proposition. That's what I've learned through some really rough lessons where identify what I think is a good company that's undervalued. And you read all the perspectives and you read the 10 K's and you think that whatever, blah, blah, blah. And I didn't necessarily see the correlation between the amount of effort and time I was spending researching these companies. And trying to pick ones that did well and the return over time. Maybe it's just, I wasn't patient enough to last the 10 years that it was, that it should have taken the, you know, like play out. And I think that's what kind of drew me towards trading is that it can be a little bit quicker paced. And you kind of realize if you were right or wrong. At a quicker frequency. So that's one thing I really like about trading, but. So I think I read Benjamin Graham, all the normal stuff and stuff like that. And I actually bought an individual stock. It was ITT technical education. It's since been delisted. I think I had to pay to get out of it, but I held that stock in my portfolio. Just as a, it was a reminder to never buy an individual stock again, because it went from whatever it was at the time. I bought $3,000 worth and it was at like a penny. And like I said, I think it had been delisted. So I had to like pay more in commission to get it offloaded. So I had to, you know, it had been delisted. So I had to like pay more in commission to get it offloaded just to get it off my books. Cause I was sick of seeing the ESI and Q or whatever it had turned into. So after that, like after kind of the individual stock idea where I think I could pick value, then I kind of got more invested into like bogal heads, like index funds. That's the way to go. And so that's what I had done for a long time. I basically was just automating all of my income, put it into the S and P 500 or some, I don't know if many of you've heard of the simple path to wealth by jail, JL Collins, decent book sent read. And it paints a pretty, pretty picture. Like, Hey, you can really minimize this. And when people ask me for investment advice, that's kind of how I point them is if you want to spend a minimum amount of time and you just kind of want to put this on autopilot, here's a way to do it. And you basically use these three or four funds that he recommends your Vanguard. They're low fee and you're maximizing, you're minimizing the, the drag on your portfolio because of the fees are low and over time it should work out. So that's how I invested basically from 2013, 2012 until probably around 2018, 2019. I don't know. And then so I was involved in a group and I'd never even thought about options or heard of options and he, like he was a similar guy where he was looking at value stocks and he would drill down in the prospectuses. And then he told me about his strategy that he was selling covered calls. And I was like, what, how is this a real thing? Like you're selling the upside, which I get, you're capping your upside, but you're reducing your risk and over time. So his strategy was basically to sell a year long covered calls. And it was just wild to me. I was like, holy cow, this is crazy. So that most of you listen to this, probably understand what a covered call is, but I feel like that's the gateway drug into options. Is like covered call or the wheel or something like that, where you're like, you already own some, like you already own a hundred shares of SPY, just sell a call against it. And then you're a covered call and you're going to collect some income, right? It's kind of like rent from rent from a house that's similar concept. And I think I've told you this, but somewhere around there when I was like, okay, options, I went deep into that, YouTube, internet, blah, blah, blah. And I think they're back to why I like good deals. I think there was some deal going on on you to me. And it was a iron condor course. And I think it was like $1.99. It was some sort of like crazy deal, almost to the point where I wouldn't even invest the time into it because it was like a dollar. Like how good could it be for a dollar? And that's how I found you, Steve, and watching the iron condor course. That was like my marijuana into the gateway drugs of doing some serious options trading like portfolio margin stuff that I have going on now. So here's a dirty little secret about you to me. Yeah. Is that all the courses on there are listed for like 200 bucks, but they're always like 98% off. I know, but listen, listen, I know that that's how, that's marketing, right? They do a good job marketing, but I think I had also had like a discount code and legitimately for the value that you provide, the $1.50 or $2 that it was was easily worth it. Right? Like I got more than $2 of value out of that. Well, I'm not arguing at the value you got was better than the two bucks. I'm just making sure you understand everybody else got that same deal that you did. No, it was special to me. All right. You can't take my away from me. So fast forward a little bit. I really ramped up stuff right around COVID. So I was at a school and COVID started happening. It was right before COVID and my wife and daughter went home to Boise, Idaho, and I stayed where I was to like finish out that, that whatever it was like a month that was going to be left, that ended up being like three months there. And the school ended a month into it. So I had like almost two months without kids, without distractions. And that's where I went deep. So I've been like saving up. Like I got to find a time because I'm also a cheapskate, right? So I got to find a time where I can just binge this NT stuff. Cause I like looked at the website. I was like, all right. I don't remember if it was $14 or $2 for like a two week trial. And I was like, this is it. This is it. This is my time. I'm going deep. I'm going to get my $2 worth or my $14 worth. And I'm just going to maximize this thing and suck as much juice as I can out of it with no intention. I'm going to be honest with you. No intention of subscribing. I was like, I'm going to take my notes. I'm going to download this guy's portfolio into my brain. And I'm not going to need him anymore, which ultimately is kind of your goal, right? Like I want to teach you how to trade. I don't want to teach you just to follow my trades. Yeah. Um, so I went deep, you know, like, I don't know. I'd lost, I lost two weeks to trading, which was good. Like I wasn't doing anything else. I was just eating, sleeping, breathing, paper trading, all of these different strategies that you essentially had, um, listed for pro members. And so I went through all the courses I took notes. I was like, man, this is all super interesting. And the more and more I got into it, it was almost like the more and more I still needed to find out, especially on the tail end of like, okay, the, the 90% of time that this works out, this is how it happens. But when the VIX jumps 400% or you have a ball, I'm going to get like, how's that going to impact it? Well, I could tell you on an iron car door, kind of what's going to happen, but it, it becomes more tricky when it's something that it's a two or three sigma event, um, and really understanding risk and position sizing and management and how all of that balances through a portfolio. I knew I wasn't going to get by my $14 two week trial. And so you hooked me and I, I mean, I think. Well, I think, and not to cut you off, but I think, I think that's a great point because I think a lot of people, you know, they think that they can come in and learn how to trade options overnight, in a week or a month or even a year. And the reality is it just doesn't work that way. Right. I mean, I've been trading for over 20 years and I, the, the amount of stuff that I learned last year, compared to what I knew five years ago. I mean, I laugh at that guy five years ago. Well, zero every single day. You know, so it's just, and it's amazing. And a lot of that has to do with, you know, the community and people like you and all the different members. And, you know, you're part of our zero DTE mastermind group and just all the different ideas and sharing that's gone on. It's just elevated all of us. And so, you know, I think when people join, they, they discount that, you know, they just think, Oh, I want, I want to come in and copy some trades or and make a quick buck or I want to, like you said, just go through the courses as quickly as I can. I'll know it and then I can move on. But they, but you don't really understand the value of the community until you actually get in there. And then you're just like, I mean, A, trading is kind of lonely. So it's awesome having, you know, so many different like-minded traders around you, but just the value and the amount that it elevates you as you, as you kind of continue to learn from, from other members. So anyway, sorry about that. But that, I think that's, that's pretty funny because I see people, people have that mindset coming in a lot. And then if they don't, if they don't really stick with it, they, they lose out on all the real gold that comes with, with a, with what the community brings. So anyway, go ahead, keep going. I totally agree. Yeah. My first, I think, so I think I subscribed for a year of NT. It might have even been a month. I was like, all right, I'm still just going to, I'm going to do one more month and see what happens. And ultimately, I think the community aspect of it. So I'm currently right now in a drawdown and it's been suck it. Like I've had, and I think I've had to kind of rethink some of what I do. It's so weird. Like investor psychology and how all that plays out. Like I don't, it's going to sound weird. I don't mind losing the money, but when I log in and I see that it's under, under where the high was and that I have to dig back up to get there. That's almost more of my issue that it's like, it's weighing on me that my, let's say my account was at, you know, to 65 to 75. And now it's down at like 220. It wasn't that there's $40, $40,000. That's like, I mean, it's realized because most of this has been realized, but it's still just paper. Like that account is a trading account. I had. Contrary to what a lot of people do. I've not been taking money out of my trading account. Part of that's because. I'm using this as an opportunity to basically grow this account until I leave. Another thing is it simply just makes accounting pretty easy because you don't have, you don't have to deal with inflow and outflow. Like everything's staying within the account. And it's very much easier to track and be, it's a lazy way of saying that I just, I don't need that money. And I'm keeping it in there for that purpose, but it sucks because I started trading with my account and I started trading with my trading account. It sucks because I started trading with bots during Christmas. That was like my goal to myself talks to some other people in community. Like I'm going to get familiar with these bots. I'm going to kind of play them out. So the end of December was pretty good at the bots. And I was sized down because I didn't want to make mistakes with real capital. And then January hit. And I think most people were in kind of the similar boat than me. That's when I decided to size up. I was like, oh my God, come on. Like right when I decided to size up, it was like every single trade that was automated was just getting tanked. Well, let's, let's talk about this for a minute because I think this is really, really important. And hopefully it helps some people because I'm not immune to it. Like it sucks. Like if I didn't have the community, here's the part that brought that up though. If I didn't have the community, I probably would have quit straight up. Yeah. But just understanding that you're in that discomfort with other people, there's a value to that. And I'm going to give you a hint. It's less than the $1,000 or whatever the yearly, yearly NT membership is, because that in and of itself has been worth it to me because I made well over that. Even if, even in this drawdown right now, I'm still over a hundred percent over where I was a year ago. So sorry. I can't. No, I just, I wanted to, I wanted to dial in on that on the whole drawdown thing because I don't know if you knew this, but I was right there with you, buddy. I mean, there's the other crappy part though you pulled out. So like I see this people and that's, that's the double-edged sword of being in the community. Right. Because I sized down my trades after that happened. I was like, I'm feeling uncomfortable. It might just be like, I think I just jumped into this water a little bit, two facts. This fix is super low. I see some of the other stuff that people are doing. And so I'm adjusting my plan. And by adjusting my plan, now I'm still in my drawdown. I see other people coming out of it like, you know, I was talking to Elliot and Elliot's like, yeah, got a couple K left and now he's out of the drawdown. I think tomorrow is getting there. You're like, I'm officially out of it. And I'm like, son of a, I'm still in it, man. Come back. Come back. Yeah. I'll just, I tell you what though, something about this drawdown, like I've, I've been trading for over 20 years. I've been through a lot of drawdowns. You know, in my early days I had account blowouts and I was, I mean, that's a whole different story. That was a different life ago, but this, this drawdown in January of 2024, it was for whatever reason, it was one of the most painful that I can remember. Maybe it's just because it's so recent, but you know, it was like, for example, I remember the day it was January 8th. It was a Monday. Mondays are the days that I size up. I remember Mondays are the days that are the most profitable, right? Well, you know, I don't know what happened to you on that Monday, but for me, I think, I think I, on just zero DTE, I think it was probably, let's call it 10 trades. I don't know exactly, but let's call it 10 trades. Every single one of them was a loss. Yeah. Like I was like, I couldn't, I couldn't do this if I tried. Option Omega says that's not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think that was a $40,000, 30 or $40,000 day for me. Yeah. And you know, and so that was just, and then on top of that, you know, there were some other bad days, but you know, it was, I mean, I started, even as trading as long as I have, I started questioning things. I started questioning my strategies. I started questioning, you know, backtesting. I started questioning myself. Like, am I really cut out for this? I mean, that kind of self talk, like it was, it was deep. Like I had to, I had to get my mind out of a draw down before I could get my finances out of the draw down. But, but yeah, so it's just, it is, man, it's a psychological just mind, you know. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, I think it's, it's one of those things where you've just got to, I don't think, you know, on one hand, when you size down, like you said, it's going to take you longer to get out so that you're going to feel that pain longer. Yeah. But at the same time, I don't disagree with doing that because we don't know what's going to happen. And, you know, your fears, you're going to dig yourself a deeper hole. You know, so it's just that balance of figuring it out. And there's not a right or wrong answer. I think it's, you know, we just, what's right for you at the time. So. Yeah. And hindsight is 2020. Because if I size down and you kept going, you lost another 80K, I'd be feeling pretty good right now. Right. Right. So that's not how it works, unfortunately. So yeah, I think that, that Monday, I remember that Monday and I was like, all right. And I stuck with my same size Tuesday. I think Tuesday was a loser too. And that's when I was like, all right, that's it. Like I got it. I got to do something because this isn't working. And it's to the point, like the swan effects, we sleep well at night. Like if you're, you're worrying about stuff and you're thinking about it. And it's detracting from your ability to be husband, father, mother, wife, whatever. If you have a normal job, like, I would be furious if I was employing someone and they were mostly just trading, but don't tell anyone. That's what I'm doing right now. We're, we're employing you to get value out of you. And even though I am still doing my job, I'm doing it well. I also have enough time for both my, both my wives, right? Like I've got my, my work life, which is what I'm doing. And then I'm also got my training wife and I'm treating both of them equally. They're both getting the nourishment they need. But yeah. I mean, I was, I had a larger drawdown. When we were, we were in that PM drawdown together, I think the portfolio drawdown of whatever that was, April, when I looked, I remember, I thought, cause sometimes on the mobile app, it takes a minute to like refresh and the, the PNL will kind of jump around like the percentage per day. And I was in between things that I was doing at work. And I opened it up and I saw like down 27%. And I was like, nah, like just give it a minute. And then it was like down 32%. I was like, no, it usually doesn't do that. But that one felt so different. I don't know why maybe it was just because it wasn't, it was unrealized. And like when you look at the, when you model it out and toss and you see like where you're at, you're like, all right, this can't actually stay like this because when zero, it's got to be up here. But man, it can get a lot worse. A lot. I mean the VIX spike, but it wasn't, when you zoom out on VIX, it wasn't that big of a spike. Right. So then my mind was in this bot where it was like, do I cut this? Because if VIX just continues to spike, this could theoretically just go, you know, hyperbolic to the downside. So yeah, I don't know. This one just felt different. Maybe it's because it's realized and it's new every single day and a portfolio margin trade you put on once and then you deal with it. Whereas the zero T, you're consciously making that decision every single time. Yeah, I think, I think there's definitely a difference between a draw down in a longer duration position that is down, but still has, you know, but you're holding for a longer period of time versus zero DTE, where, yeah, it's daily transactions. Like, you know, at the end of the day, here's what I won or lost on my zero DTE. And it's, it's, it is what it is. And if you lost, you're, you know, you're going in the next day. Yeah. The mental capital involved with putting on a trade after a losing trade is hard. And when that compounds over time, that's way harder. And I think that's probably why the earlier draw down was easier because the PM trades, they didn't require me to continue doubling down. Right. It wasn't like it's in the hole and it's been in the hole, but I'm going to place another trade that mimics that hole. So I didn't actually think about that until now, but that's probably why this one felt so different. Even if you're having bots executed, it's still, you still feel it. Right. You still look at the, at the trade steward manager and you can see it fluctuating. But yeah, so that I might trade history. Right. So I joined NT started getting all these strategies and it's just been a never ending stream. Like it's funny because we'll have people come into the community through you to me or whatever. And I can recognize them because they're like, Hey, when do I roll this iron condor? And it's like, yo, that's old news. That's like 2016 stuff. We're like, it's still a valid strategy, but we're like way beyond that. And I just think it's funny cause it's like, Oh man, that was me. But now like the strategies that I learned, they're still valid, but they're not, they're definitely not a major component of what I'm doing or even you're doing for that matter. Like iron ducks, probably used to be a much bigger component of what you're doing. I don't even do ducks anymore. I'll throw one on every once in a while. If it just seems juicy or if I'm light on positions, but I don't really play the duck game very much anymore. I'm mostly focused on portfolio margin because it works well with my lifestyle. I'll be honest with you. Like you put them on, you look at them once a day or like you check the portfolio margin trade group. And if there's anything new, then you can take a look at it, but none of that is like, I need to get that done right now. Sometimes. Yeah. So speaking of that. So you're, you're obviously that's a. Fits well for your schedule. You're also doing zero DTE stuff. So though, so like, how do you, how do you think about that as far as how much you allocate to a certain strategy or how do you, how do you think about that? So I think they're complimentary and I treat them kind of as such. So I don't have like a certain amount of risk and it's hard with portfolio margin because you can put on some of them, as you know, for zero margin. It's kind of tricky and I. I'm at or below typically what you put out for portfolio margin trades. Sometimes I will get into half around where you got in. And then maybe if it goes against me, maybe I'll add more. So that's kind of how I run that all. I'll be honest with you. I've been mostly mimicking those. I've done a lot of like golden sharks. I like those a lot. I set those up on my own. I had a couple of those hit really well right in the head, which was nice. But for most of the portfolio margin stuff right now, it's been mostly monkey see monkey view and just watching and I'll do I'll do a lot of the adjustments on my own. And then it feels so validating when you put out an adjustment and it's very similar. Like, hey, here's what I'm looking at. Or you'll put one on like a couple hours after I did. And it's very similar. So I do a lot of the adjustments just based off where my total portfolios because I don't take all of the portfolio margin trades either. They've moved way far from where you put them on or I just don't really like the setup. So I do a lot of adjustments on my own to kind of the trades you put out. And I think eventually when I have more time, I'll do more tweaking and I'll set up more of these things on my own because I've played around with setting them up. But for some reason, sometimes they just don't set up. Right. They just don't set up. And so and they take a lot of time. They do like, I mean, it takes a lot of time and a lot of tweaking and figuring out the explorations and strikes that work best. So it is it is a little bit of a time suck. I dance and I think once I'm once I'm free of this current job, I think I'll be able to do more of that and be a little bit more active in that group and manage more kind of on my own. But for right now, it's been mostly monkey see monkey do with adjustments that I make based on assumptions or overall risk in my portfolio. However, I want to deal with that. Then you mentioned zero DTE. You're using bots primarily or exclusively. So I was really liking the bots and man, I feel like we couldn't have picked a better time for Chad to come in and be like, yo, what's up? What's up? That's your drawdown. So cute. Like check this out. Like everybody's just getting slammed and doctor Chad just coming in and just like, you know, just doing his thing. Like I just took the original course and I'm just kind of doing it my way in which that's awesome. Right. And for those listening, so Chad runs our day trading live stream. He streams live in the morning, couple of days a week. And he had never even sniffed zero DTE until October of last year. And he so he took kind of the just the first very first zero DTE class that I put out. And he started paper trading it for two months straight. All he did was paper trade. And he kind of he made his own tweaks to it, you know, the way that he managed it and a few little tweaks, but pretty pretty similar to, you know, to what was in the course. And he started trading with real money in December. And then in January of this year, he really started, you know, he, he dialed in exactly his process for trading. And that's when he started tracking it. And he made a hundred, a hundred grand in January. So anyway, that's what he was referring to everybody. Yeah. Some of us are like, I'm just fighting and scratching my way out of this drawdown. And he's like, I just dropped a hundred K in my first month. No kidding. So that was awesome. Yeah. So I started doing some of the bots. So the way my schedule works is it kind of fluctuates. It resets every semester. I'm in education. That's where I'm in right now. And so my time is not necessarily my time. So like last semester, I was not available at the market open. So I missed that. That meant I could not place any trades. A lot of the AM iron condors that we do regardless. So I would base, I started looking. Thank God for DKS too. Thank God for Dick talking with him. Like, here's some of the strategies he used. He shifted my AM window more to the like 10, 20, 10, 25. That's kind of where the, the, the OG DKS would kick off. And so I started using some of that. And I think I'm probably similar to most people. There's a billion different option. Omega back tests out there. You kind of pick and choose, tweak it, however you like, based on your risk tolerance. And then just kind of go forward with that. And that's been definitely my strategy up until this current drawdown that was, here's my plan. I'm more or less sticking to it. It was hard though, because I didn't really control my time. So it was, it was overwhelming. So I used the calendar with all the potential trades that I could be taking in any one given day. And so if I was around and I took, and I had a trade available, I would take it. And that was kind of stressing me out because that it was almost like it was the wild, wild west of trading. I didn't, while I had a plan, it wasn't really a full plan. Because it was like, here's the, you weren't available. You wouldn't take it. Yeah. It was like a buffet. And you go into the buffet and you're like, well, my plan was to go to the buffet, but now you have so many options. It's like, do I get the cheese sticks? Do I get whatever the steak is? Big golden corral. I, listen, restaurants lose money on me. Anytime my wife and I go out, it's got to have an aspect of unlimited. So like we do big red Robin fans, like Mexican restaurants with the chips, like just keep them coming, right? Olive Garden, your tip is proportional. How many breadsticks I get? I got to say, I went to a golden corral a couple of years ago and I hadn't been to one. I don't, maybe ever. It was the most disgusting thing. I haven't been to a golden corral in a while, but it's just my favorite buffet reference. I use it all the time when I'm teaching, like, yo, this is a golden corral. Chinese restaurant buffet. I can get down on that. I do get down on some Chinese restaurant buffet, but man, I remember I was going with that. Golden, golden corral sidetracked you. You know, I had the golden corral of options of all of you. Yeah, your calendar is the golden corral. My calendar was just like, oh man, like it's whatever. And maybe I was full that day. And so full the analogy would be like, I already had a pretty decent size on for a DKS or something else. So I found that to be kind of stressful. Just because I never knew for sure when I was going to be around or what trades I was going to have on. So it felt kind of disjointed and it didn't really feel like a plan, but it was the best I could do because I didn't really control my schedule. And then the bots came around. And I really wish some of the guys in NT would have pushed me harder. I think Ryan did his best. He's like, yo dude, you seriously, you should probably figure out these bots because it would work with your schedule. Same with them. Yeah. There are a couple of people were like, Hey, you should check out these bots. That sounds perfect for your situation. And I kind of pushed it off until December when I had some time that I knew I could actually dedicate to making sure I got them right and actually get these up and running and not start a subscription and not really used it back to me being a cheapskate, right? So I started using a lot of the bots and that was a game changer. That was super cool. I still think it's super cool. The fact that I can be more or less detached. And it just happens. And so it's like right now I teach, I teach a class and bots are entering my trades. My classes started like nine, nine 45. So I'm able to see that they open correctly. And then I'm just kind of looking at my watch. Cause a lot of the morning strategies are just direct or not directional. They're like iron contour. So I'm just watching on my watch. Every once in a while, I'll see what's going on just with SPX. And I know if it's within a couple of percentage points or whatever, like we're pretty good. So that's been, that's been game changing. It's allowed me to take trades that I would otherwise feel very uncomfortable taking off. Cause I know in my trade plan, I talked about this is kind of how I manage some of these trades because I'm not available. My biggest thing is losing those, uh, losing the sellers or losing the buyers on the, so I sold short those two strikes. If there's no one willing to buy them back from me, then I'm screwed. I can't get out of that position. So what I love about trade steward is they'll just identify that and sell the one that they can, the one that's tested or whatever. Um, so drawdown happened in January. That was all mechanical at that point. That was my plan, sticking to my plan, size up my plan, get hit right in the nuts, right? Basically my January. What was your, what was your 2023? Like, do you remember what was like on a percentage basis, what kind of returns? 23 was pretty great. I think I posted it somewhere in the community and I did have one infusion of capital in 2023 just to get over that portfolio margin and hump. Um, but it was in excess of 150%. That's awesome. Yeah, it's crazy. So like is the, is the NT community worth it? Yeah. If you actually kind of like buy in and do it and commit to it and learn, like, absolutely, there's so much to be learned. And so many different strategies that can all work synergistically to hopefully prevent big drawdowns and kind of work, um, irrelevant of what the other ones doing. So 2023 was really awesome. I was super happy with that. Like I've got other investments going on investments in business, real estate and stuff like that. And when I take a step back and I look at what's performing, it's a no brainer to continue to like double down on this, like let those things kind of work out how they're working out or not working out and just make this kind of my, my active investing part. Are you actively involved in real estate where I'm the property manager and I'm super involved in it. Like maybe I'll let the property manager handle that, but I'm actively involved in this side or this, this silo of my wealth creation. And so are you, is that rental properties? Yep. So Virginia, I bought into a syndication that went. So that's good. It was an Airbnb condo complex out in San Diego. Um, and there were some bright during COVID kind of confluence of bad factors that basically went bankrupt. I lost almost all my investment in that. Um, I've got the fourplex. Uh, I also, and have some ownership interest in a project going into the Gillette stadium. Um, so there's a wind tunnel being built there. That one's running into some issues as well. So if that ends up working out, then that'll be awesome. And that will provide kind of that. Just steady, very hands off on like other than just giving investment. That's all that's required out of that. So I can spend more time thinking about trading and how I get better here. And hopefully those compliment each other over time. So yeah. So, and then, uh, I know at one point you were also doing, you were also trading calendar spreads. Are you just focused on zero DT and portfolio margin? Are you still doing any calendars? I'm still doing some calendars last week was really nice. I think most of my calendars prop, pop pretty well. Um, I was on the, I was on the boat that was sized down on calendars over like the low period of Christmas, New Year's, et cetera, where they were getting hammered. So that wasn't very fun. Um, but I think, I think ramping those up a little bit more things seem to be getting a little bit more spicy as we're talking up, but you know, I'm right 50% of the time. Most of the time I go directional go opposite and you'll win. It's like, without fail, it's like, Oh man, if this breaks, then I usually look at my risk and how I, how I decided to go directional. And maybe this is a bad way of thinking of it. But so that day, I think it was a couple of days ago, I had a quiet lunch that was just testing me, right? It was, it was just flirting down there. And I was like, man, this sucks. And so I, I looked at, like you say, you can trade whatever you want. As long as you kind of have a system around it, when you're going to take profits and whatever. So I basically looked at where it had bounced twice. And I was like, if it goes below this, it could probably fall pretty decently below this. So I would at least hedge some of that last, that loss of the quiet lunch trade if it goes that way. And then the max, I mean, it was a debit trade. So I got in it for whatever $1,000. If it goes the other way, and my quiet lunch hits a profit target, I'm going to hit profit and quiet lunch. And it's more than more than going to cover that like insurance of that debit spread that I did. So I don't typically go directional. I just don't like what it does to me. Unless it's something where it's hedging. And for some reason, like that works better for me. Like I'll take some discretion in that sense, but other than that. So I've been very, very mechanical for 2023. And I think, I think we've all seen a little bit of what Chad's bringing to the table. And that definitely intrigued me. And maybe I'm hoping that's not a shiny object, but I've taken a bunch of my own Chad trades. And I don't mimic his trades. I'm doing my own special way about it. And a lot of times, so the way I've been approaching those Chad trades, I don't put them on in the morning. I let my bots open whatever trades they're going to open. And when those trades get contested, that's when I kind of put on a hedge trade, a hedge Chad trade. So I'm letting option Omega drive my main strategy trades. But when those aren't working out, I'm okay putting on some hedge with some Chad flare. And that's been working out pretty well lately. I didn't paper trade at a billion times. So I'm sorry, Chad. But I feel pretty confident just having done zero DTE, like it's a very similar to how we were all starting out in 2023 with the OCO orders and you copy this, you paste that. And so I was pretty confident in my execution and my ability to manage it that way. I'm pretty confident just based off of how I've done, like I set up immediately after I put one of those discretionary Chad trades in, I set up alerts below the price targets with the updated stop loss. So I get a text on my phone every time that happens. And I don't have to do that calculation. I don't have to look if I'm on the ski hill, I can look at my phone and I can just update real quick. All of those trailing stops. So say that again, you have an alert with the, with what the stop needs to be adjusted to. Yup. How does that work? Oh my God. Do I get to tell you something? Is this in toss? You're saying? I'll reverse mentorship, Steve. All right, you ready? So within toss. So you put in, I think all of us are pretty familiar. If not, you've done videos. I think I've done videos. Everyone done videos of how to put in a first triggers three OCO. So that's pretty standard practice. So the way I do it is I do a first triggers, three OCO and then I like to hit that 80%. So I've got four different profit targets. I've got 20, 40, 60, 80. So I immediately go to my working orders and I create duplicate OCO order. So it's going to copy both of it. And I put that in there first. So there's a period of whatever 30 seconds where one of my contracts on a discretionary, I see. Doesn't have a stop, right? But once I have those all in there, then I'll do, I think, I don't remember who in the community posted it, but the blast all function. That's awesome for the OCO or not for the OCO, but just for those stop losses. Huge thank you. I don't remember. I wish I could give credit where credit was to, but that was a huge like a ha moment for me. Like, oh, that's so easy. So once I have that all set up, then I right click each percentage order. So you've got your 20%, your 40%, your 60%, your 80%. If you right click that order and you can hit create alert, I do five cents below that order fill price. And then I type in move stop to 3.75. The one below that move stop to 2.75. The one below that I go move stop to 1.75. So that's the way I do it. And then you get a text message saying move stop to got it. And it's super helpful because you don't have to like think, oh shoot, what was it? Or if you're, for me, if I'm not at my computer, if I'm not in front of my screen, which I know a lot of you have the, the luxury of being right there and having your, your cheat sheet up and it's, it's obvious, but if you're out and about running around, it can be helpful just to get a text to be like, oh, probably hit my profit target. And also here's the new stop. So I've found that five cents below whatever you're actually like limit order is, is good. If you leave it at the current price, two things happen. One, if you don't change it to less than or equals two, it's going to be greater. And as soon as you submit the alert, it's going to go, and you're going to be like, what just happened? I use those alerts. They help me out. They may help you out. I also set them for when I'm potentially at risk of losing a bit if I'm not using trade steward. And I'll just close out the position if that happens. So very mechanical. Now I'm kind of, and I feel like every trader kind of goes through this where they add some discretion back in. I know you've been working with your trade coach. I forget what his name is. Jared Tendler. Yeah. I know you've been working with Jared Tendler and you've kind of, your outlet for that was like the directional future stuff. And that's super interesting. And you've been able to express your intuition in that way. And so I feel like I'm on my journey that way. I'm just not quite there. I don't have the market feel that some of you guys have. And so I've been using my discretion to essentially hedge when something's going against me. Eventually maybe I'll get to the point where I cut out the automated trades. I don't think I'll get to that point because I like that. And I'm also a numbers guy. And I see option Omega, like that gives me confidence over time that that's going to work out, but especially when volatility is so low and we're going into times where like, I mean if you were trading in 2023, you knew that power could be pretty wide. And now it's like, man, just doing crazy things for gas money, you know, like it's just right there. It's not the same that it was. So I think being able to recognize when things, like that's the golden question. Is this a different era? Is this a different time? And you always ask that. And I don't know if there's a right answer, but I think shifting your strategy somewhat based off whatever your current opinion is or your current biases is okay. And so I've kind of sized down some of my automated trades and I've added, I've sized up a little bit more of when it goes against me. So that like a doctor, Chad, discretionary iron condor type of situation. So that's currently where I'm at. I'm doing, I think it's automated and then discretionary to hedge. I think it's, you know, going back to the famous Van Tharp quote, right? It's, it's, you're not, you're not trading the markets. You're trading your beliefs about the markets. And so it's, it's about whether it's using a back test whether it's about using just a probabilities methodology, whether it's the confidence you have in your discretionary trading ability, whatever it is that gives you confidence, as long as you are managing risk well around that thought or process, that's, that's what it's all about. Yeah. All right. A couple other things. And then we can wrap it up here, Meach. I really appreciate your time today, but what about, what about position sizing? I mean, are you thinking about when you put on a position size or you position sizing based on the amount of buying power it's taking about with your stop, how are you thinking about position sizing and how are you position sizing for each of the different strategies that you trade? So portfolio margin, this is kind of a cop out answer, but TBD, but I've only been trading portfolio margin for like a year or whenever you started the group. So I have yet to really trade that in a super high elevated volatility environment, which in theory would be nice, but the ride to get there is going to be uncomfortable because I will likely have positions open. So I don't, because that's not a stop loss. I think Lauren's thrown around like this is just my personal stop loss. And I kind of have a hard time with that just because I don't, I've seen them come back from so much worse. And maybe that's a gambler's mentality. Maybe I survived that volatility spike we had in October or whenever it was, I don't remember April. And I came back from that. And so like maybe that's now in my programming that maybe I'm going to hold too long. And luckily back to why NT so important. I'm not alone. I'm not making that decision in a vacuum. So I see what other people are doing. I mean, we've got different ranges of cautious to, you know, just whatever send it within the group. And I probably fall somewhere in the middle there, but I see what you do. I see what Lauren does. I see what Maro does. I see what other people communicating in there, like where their pain point is. And that's their pain point. That's their view of the market. And they're not, they're sometimes right. They're sometimes wrong. And that's just kind of how it goes. So position sizing for portfolio margins kind of tricky for zero DTE stuff. I was pretty consistent in the two to 3% based off stop loss. So not buying power because my buying power is also different because it's a portfolio margin account. So it's not like it just straight up subtracts the distance between the wings and that's your max loss. I size those for stop loss, not for max loss. And so I size in the past, like when I was super mechanical, it was anywhere between two and four or five ish percent, depending on if I have overlapping strikes, et cetera, based off stop loss. I've dialed that back a bit just because honestly, my tail is between my legs a little bit from that last draw down. I got to get my, I got to get my confidence back. And that's okay. I'm okay with that. It's helpful having the group and seeing other people in similar situations that sucks when they crawl the way out faster, but that is what it is. It could easily be the other way, right? So I scale that up as my confidence comes back and then my position, five position sizing for the, the discretionary I've settled in at eight. I feel that's pretty comfortable. I'm okay with that, that loss on an individual basis knowing that it's very very much uncorrelated. I don't know if uncorrelated is the right thing, but it's hedging something else that I have going on. So in order for it to not work out, it would take a pretty significant move in the continued direction of where I put that trade on for it to be successful, right? And that happens. Like we've all been there. That happens, but it's, it's the minority of the time that that happened. So I've settled on about eight and similar, similar idea to Chad or I won't, I won't put one on if it's staying kind of within the bounds of either the original trade that's gone south or the new trade that's kind of in its, in its wheelhouse. I've really dialed back on power hour lately. I like Wuga's a no stop. I think that's, it's great for my situation where the bot can just fire and I don't really have to worry about it. So I've been messing with that, but because the last two hours of the day, I'm literally skiing. I just, I don't feel too comfortable just doing that, like letting it run. So I've sized down my power hour and that may change when volatility changes or things get better. But that's just basically where I'm at. So then calendars, calendars are the, the thing I've done definitely sized down the most on part of that's just because I haven't had the bandwidth to really come up with a super solid plan of how I want to trade calendars. A lot of times those get super correlated. And so even though each individual position that I'm putting on in it by itself isn't crazy, when they all go to Sigma to the right or left and they're outside the profit tent, that can, that adds up pretty quickly. So I took a pretty big hit. I, I trade calendars in a different account and my Roth account. And it sucked because my, you know, my equity curve was going up and bouncing a little bit. And then like I hit a drawdown and then now it's bouncing back up again. So I owe my calendars a little bit more work on exactly how I want to put those on. I mostly do the Friday calendars, I think. So we believe what we believe, like I believe volatility spikes on Mondays. I think it's down on Fridays. I think Tim has shown that. And if you look at the option Omega test, that's kind of like, there's something there. There's something to be said about that. So I put a lot of calendars on on Friday and then they basically expire on progressively longer days out. So there's some exposure there, which helps me out. But ultimately all of them are pretty centered around whatever they were put on in the last whatever hour to hour and a half of market close. One gets smoked. They're probably all get smoked, right? There's definitely some correlation there, which makes me a bit hesitant to really load the boat. But when it works, it's great. It's such a low maintenance trade and you just put it on and then it hits the profit target and you're like, well, that was cool. So that's basically where I'm at right now. And honestly, you're going to talk to me in six months and it's going to be different. Like that's the beautiful part about this. Some will come up with something and it'll, it'll boot out the discretionary I see or it'll take place of the, the modified DKS that I'm doing right now or maybe I'll tweak it or some will have something different or, or whatever. So I don't know. That's where I'm at. Awesome. Well, Meach, I really appreciate your time. This has been really fun conversation. I think what I think is really cool about what you've done is you have, you have a crazy schedule. You're not somebody who can just sit in front of your computer all day. And there's a lot of people who would, in your position would say, I can't, I can't do this because of my schedule or this or that or that. You've made it work. And you, like this little thing you've done with your alerts, it's a text message and, you know, notifying you and the way that you line up your calendar with all your strategies. You have found a way to make it work and I just kudos to you, man. I think it's cool. I think it's awesome that you've, what you're doing, I think it's, I just love having you as part of the community or you're always helpful. If somebody asks questions, it's been awesome just to kind of see you where you started to where you're at now and it's just, it's been a lot of fun. That's awesome. Thanks, Steve. He's a lot coming from you. All right, Meach. Take care of my friend. Appreciate it. Great conversation. Talk to you soon. All right, see ya.