That is the answer I would give a stranger at a bar. Everything below is the longer one.
My first trade was a Microsoft call. About seventy five dollars. I was sitting in my dad's basement in popop's recliner, on my cell phone, in 2019. I was nervous. I had no idea what I was doing. Then I saw the outcome, and I knew this was something I could actually accomplish. I had accomplished it.
The reason I was even there: a buddy of mine started screaming his head off one day. I walked over to his computer. He was up seven hundred dollars on Netflix. I had no idea what that meant, what he had done, how any of it worked.
I went home and started studying. Day and night. Countless all nighters. I taught myself everything. Trend lines, patterns, market structure. I figured all of that out on my own. Everything except the psychological side. That part took longer and cost more.
I put twenty four thousand dollars into an Amazon trade. I told myself I was going to double or quadruple my money on it.
Amazon dropped eight or ten dollars the next day. I panicked. It was the biggest position I had ever put on, and the biggest I had ever been down. I took the loss the next day and drowned myself in whatever I could find to distract me. Two more days and that same trade would have doubled like I expected. I had picked the right expiration. I just panicked out of it.
That was the day trading stopped being about charts for me. It became about my own mind.
I went back to Mark Douglas. Trading in the Zone. I listened to the audiobook religiously, day after day, for over a year and a half. I read Stan Weinstein. Secrets for Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets. Those two books changed my approach permanently.
I stopped trading options for a stretch and went back to plain stock equity. I rebuilt my confidence. Then slowly, when I was ready, I worked back into options. Different person on the other side of that work.
Now when I mentor someone, the first thing I tell them is the same thing those books taught me. You have to learn more about yourself than about the markets. What is inside of you. What you actually want to accomplish. Why you are trying to do this. That comes before any technical analysis. Anyone can learn technical analysis. The harder work is learning yourself.
Tesla and SPY most of the time. ES futures. That is the short list.
I mostly do swings. Overnight swings and longer dated swings, three to six months out. My longer dated options I hold for nine months. I am not a high frequency trader. I do not chase. I find the setup, I size it, I let it work.
I wake up whenever I wake up. I check TradingView or Robinhood first, mostly because I like seeing the little line charts. Sometimes I take a futures trade before the open. Sometimes I just let the market open and watch what it is doing.
Around eleven or twelve I might take a trade. Day trade or not. Often it is a swing entry. Then I go about my day. I check in on the markets here and there. I am not glued to the screen the way I used to be.
When the market closes, I look at where things settled. Tesla. SPY. The Magnificent names that carry the most weight in SPY and QQQ. ES futures. Those names are my road map for the next session.
Zen is my son. He is everything to me. I would do anything for him. He is the reason I am pushing this brand the way I am now.
The edge is what you need in the markets. It is also what you need in life. You need to be emotionally stable to do either one well. So, Zen Edge. The name carries both halves of what I think the work actually requires.
If you are reading this and you do not have anyone to help you. No one to guide you. You have been struggling to figure it out yourself. You do not want to give up. You need a way out.
That is who I built this for.
I have wanted to run something like this since 2021 or 2022. Everything in my path has slowly led to it. My own Discord. The mentoring. The plan audits. Helping people understand they can do this too. If I graduated with a 1.6 GPA and figured out how to trade stocks, anyone can.
ZenEdge sits under Gant Villagomez Capital. That is the parent. Two brands run under it. ZenEdge for everything trading. Hidden Edge Advisory for everything else.
I am not a registered investment advisor. I am not a broker dealer. I am not a financial planner. I do not run a signal service. I do not call trades for people to copy. What I do is review your plan, audit your process, and sit with you on what you are actually trying to build. The market work is yours. The structure around it is what I help with.
chartmaster3000
The audit gets you a written trader plan in your own words. The library has everything else I have written.
Read the audit page