I didn't come from Wall Street, I'm a Bay Area gentleman with a tech & legal background; debugging internal systems as a Process Q3 Engineer at Salesforce while
quietly watching the markets like they owed me something. Turns out, all that obsession with patterns,
automation, & catching problems before they blow up? That's just trading with a different interface.
A year & some change ago, I made the switch to full-time futures trading. Hours on end of screen time, back & foward testing order flow, journaling, & relentless pattern recognition. Strictly data driven.
The technical background helped me see the market differently, as a system with rules,
not a casino with luck. Every setup has logic. Every loss has a lesson. Every edge compounds with time.
Late 2021, I relocated from San Francisco to New York City for work. North to a year in,
the Q3 department downsized, which means the reduction in force was including me. In a snap, the reason moving 3,000 miles away, was damn near in the rear view mirrior.
Should I move back to California, or double the risk here in NYC? So I pivoted, in-between jobs, being a floating Dev Freelancer, my property manager at that time, Alex, was fortunately very close to these two men who were
hiring. She unknowingly shifted the trajectory, & one of my great friends til this day. She vouched, I pounced; I took a position as a Project Estimator at Monaco Group US & a Software QA at Alumitech Systems a horizontal company under the Greek big dog himself, Pano Sereti, in Midtown-East, Manhattan;
simultaneously taking a Electrical Estimator position
at Einstein Electrical under Ivan Butkovic, a Croatian gorilla, in Astoria, Queens. Can't complain that my plates was full if wanted to eat. No experience in any construction, electrical or finance, but every conversation
with Pano & Ivan just mutually made sense. They knew my skills were transferable for the direction they wanted to take their companies. They wanted someone ,head above waters. Their
visions? The white-collars in their offices moving forward: younger, sleeker, caught up with updated internal & external communication softwares. Newer ways to bid,
utlizing newer takeoff softwares, & automating obtaining materials for our guys on the field; I was their man to
assist getting the systems running from the ground up, with the help of tight-knit team. I'm in. Time to learn the game of zoning, premitting, NY's Department of Buildings codes, Local Law compliances, OSHA safety standards, union jurisdictions, Con Edison coordination of services, scopes, take-offs, reading & interpreting architechural, single-line drawings, RFI's, different vendor specs, pricing of material & labor volatility, the whole fucking nine yards.
I've already learned long time ago the construction industry in New York has always had its own rules. Union or non-union, it didn't matter. There's a certain energy to it. Raw. I was initially terrified.
There were handshakes happening before any contract was signed, relationships that went back decades,
& certain names you just didn't question. I wasn't naive to it. If anything, it made the whole thing more interesting to navigate.
I'll tell you now, the New York M**** families haven't gone anywhere. That world is very much alive. Certain subcontractors get the call. Certain ones don't. Nobody asks why. That's just New York.
Meanwhile the tech job market was suffocating. Oversaturated. Getting an interview was starting to feel like trying to hit a 9-leg flex parlay with FanDuel's dumbass thin margins. Regardless, after one of my favorite & interesting work experieces (the connectetions
I've bridged with GC's, subcontractors, vendors, architects, designers, estimators, PM's, business owners, building managments & certain family members) under those two men, was coming to an end, for now; it's opened endless doors for me that I'm still walking through til this day. Will hold that era near to my heart. However, one Tuesday afternoon while I was working on a take-off from this beautiful floor plan, I recieved an email, then followed up with a call half & hour after. The job I've applyed for a half year before.
I just landed a seat in the finance department at Equinox Corporate as a Disput Processor,
Midtown Manhattan. Ivan & Pano knew it was my time, but insisted that I'm welcome back to the teams, anytime. My heart. My professions & hobbies just collided; Tech/Fitness/Finance. My careered profession fell back in place. Not only that, I'm at my dream company, in retrospec. Employee access across all clubs around the globe. Hybrid. & had a young team working on my side.
Eleven months in, best time I've had in New York so far, the best coworkers I've ever worked with & the individuals I've met lifting in all the clubs in NY. The networks I've connected with just being present at any of those gyms, & I made sure to utilize every club in the city; the whispers started. Layoffs. You could feel it in the air before anyone said a word. I already knew, I'd been through this before. So I locked in on trading harder,
treating it less like a hobby & more like my exit plan. Then it happened. Half the team got cut. Including me.
Between jobs I kept applying pressure in the job market while freelancing. Front-End Development & Estimating gigs through Fiverr & Gun.io. I still had more hunger in me with the lifestyle I was living in New York. During this time, I built, ran & overseen all operations for Gorillaware, an e-commerce platform; & for two quarters, it ran postive ROI's across all meterics, I was in & out. See money, take money. With that being said, as a Digital Nomad,
finding a good cafe or lobby with soilid WiFi was essiantial for our livelyhoods, & to not be cooped up working in our apartments. Remote working New Yorkers & implants knew about these gems, & if you are new to the city or just passing through; I myself will vouch for them: ACE Hotel Lobby, an amazing open work space with
a lovely happy hour menu. Any WeWork offices - but my personal go-to's were in MidTown on 42nd & the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Talera Beer never fails to let the creative juices flow, but espically
ending your day towards happy hour - the buns (bar menu item...). Last but not least - Freehold Brooklyn, the Brooklyn nights those work days led to was beyond me, yes the productivity in there
skyrockets before then too fyi; I digress. I landed DevOps contract at GitHub through Robert Half Technology Staffing Agency. Worked on internal TEAM tools that were never scheduled to deploy, worse assignment I have ever took.
Then from sheer irony; one Saturday night vibing & having a heck of a time at The Delancey, my group of friends end up talking shop with another group who has a table next to ours, TLDR; one of the guys I was talking shop with offered me a Marketing &
Social Media Specialist role at Joonbug Presents, a nightlife company
in Midtown, Manhattan. No marketing experience, I don't even have a social media presence.. just vibed with cool ass guy on the rooftop of The Delancey. Damn, it's who you network at the end of the day right? The lifestyle I was running away from since I was in my early 20s, reeled me back in.
But I knew in my heart I was not meant taking this route again. Yet, being connected with individuals intertwined with New York Nightlife; you recieve too much motion, too much wickedness. I saw self destruction a borough away. At that time I knew, this, & corporate America was a
rat race that I knew I had to stray away from. For my own good.
Taking the N & transfering trains, trading my time for money, working on someone else's dream, days when my social battery was at 3%, looking at my watch to tell me when to go to lunch. North of a decade of this, & my I still had no fulfillment.
The turning point came on a random Sunday in Chelsea, Lower Manhattan.
Me & some old Equinox coworkers were heading to Hoboken for the day when, a mutual then & now one of my best friends, Jared, casually showed me his brokerage P&L on his phone. He knew I was trading, we talked about it, but we both knew I was not really focused on it.
I had no experience with Futures at that point. But he knew I can find my edge like himself. His numbers were real.
His lifestyle was real. The random weekday sidequest he was doing was real. Everytime we all linked up for a night, he was generiously paying for all our dinners, drinks, tables with no hesitation or even entertaining the idea of a Venmo request. On top of that, he probably had the best
brownstone apartment I've been in. Yup. I was inspired. I looked up to him. Be like J. My guy has always been good to me, & after these past few years. I'm in his debt.
J then introduced me to the world of prop firms.
What is a prop firm? A proprietary trading firm gives traders access to
funded accounts, anywhere from $25K to $200K, without risking your own capital.
You pass a performance evaluation, prove you can trade consistently, & they fund you.
You keep a percentage of the profits. It democratized professional trading for
people like me who had the skill but not the starting capital.
At the time I was already dabbling with ETF options. Bought into some discord communities, signal groups, you name it. Trying to use someone else's edge, trying to skip the process.
Buying eval after eval. Blew account after account. Kept coming back. Kept studying. Kept putting in the screen time through Asia & London session even checking & executing the charts
during New York session while at the office.
One morning, on my TopStep 150k XFA; a "Silver Bullet" set-up presented itself on NQ during the 10AM killzone. The trade lasted 80 minutes. Trimmed. Trailed Stop. Managed risked like a professional.
$11.3k. First real big hit. I put in my notice the same week.
For a few months I was unemployed, trade after trade, sleepless nights, tired mornings, just betting on myself. Like always.
Then the numbers started stacking. Payout after payout on my live & express accounts. $143K YoY by the end of 2024. I wanted to expand my horizons. I dipped my feet in investing seed money towards
a few buddies who planned on opening & operating two Smoke Shops. One in Jackson Heights, Queens & another Propect Park in Brooklyn. More oppurtunities came, introduction as seed investor for a cultivation grow-op in Pennyslvania - my first big man investments.
When returns was endlessly depositing; I packed my apartment, subletted it to a friend of a friend, & took another risk,
moved to South Beach, Miami. Airbnb'd for two months while hunting
for the right apartment. Finding the right bachelor pad within my budget close to Publix & a Pura Vida in Miami Beach
is harder than it sounds. We made it work. I digress.
Now I have the luxury of time & location.
I trade in the any session that presents my set-ups in a A+ manner, travel when I want, & visit family & friends in California whenever I feel like it.
The charts don't care where you are. That's the whole point. If I can do it out of all people, financial & time freedom is obtainable for anyone.
I built this platform from scratch. No freelancers, no pre-built framework/infrastructure, no shortcuts; just late nights,
hazy ipa's, & a vision of what I wished existed when I was starting out. This was initially a personal pre-session dashboard. Somewhere to pull up key levels,
check the economic calendar, scan earnings, & get my head right before the open.
One day in the middle of cooking dinner, vision became something bigger.
The goal now is simple: build a scalable free trading resource hub for everyone & anyone in this space. Whether
you're a funded trader dialing in your edge, someone grinding through evaluations
wondering if it's worth it, or just a curious mind who stumbled across futures for
the first time; you belong here. This is the valley.
I'll keep building. Better data, cleaner UI, more tools. This thing grows as I grow.
I will never sell you a course, a community, a strategy,
or signals. Everything is free. Always will be.
This is for the love of the game.
My lines are open on the bottom of this page. If you have ideas on better data integrations, UI improvements,
or anything that makes this more useful, I want to hear it.
God Bless.
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