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Notes from the desk
Options selling, the wheel, reading the tape, and building the tools that do the boring parts. New posts land here as they publish.
PhD in Self-Sabotage? My AI Trading Desk Is My Sponsor
Position sizing in futures trading is where I always struggled. I’d be up a bunch then oversize and give it all back, or try and catch a $1500 bid to pass my prop with only 1 contract because I was scared after the…
Underwater After This Week? A Put Will Not Get You Back to Even
If tech put you underwater this week, don't buy a put Monday. The puts that paid this week were bought before the drop, when they were cheap. Or so I heard. Let us first focus on what matters most - what you paid for…
I Fired Myself From Fantasy Football. Claude Took the Job.
VictoriousSecret has been my fantasy football name for over a decade now. I used to enjoy it a lot more than I do now - draft nights at the cigar bar, and data wasn’t something I did all day every day. A warm, slightly…
I asked three AIs to help me listen to my kid
To say that my 8-year-old has been struggling with some emotional issues as of late would be an understatement. To save him future embarrassment, I won’t go into a ton of detail, but we’re on suspension number two, in…
Why We Picked Connect Trade Over SnapTrade
When I first connected my own portfolio to the AfterHour app I wrote about earlier, I was brought to a SnapTrade screen, and so began my first experience with the app. Sync issues abound in the app, I started trying to…
Stalking Millionaires & Hacking APIs
Well more than half my subscribers on Substack have been following me since I first started writing on AfterHour. If you’re not one of those, it’s basically a social app dedicated to stock trading where users connect…
If You Don't Buy One Of These Stocks, You Obviously Hate Boobs
Scroll to GILD if you don't care about my personal story here. My mom was born in… sometime in the 60s. When she was 17 she used to borrow her friend Sue's ID to get into dance clubs, because Sue was 18 and apparently…
The Slowest Part of My AI Pipeline Is Me
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Goldilocks and the Three Prompts - The AI Image Template I Should Have Used Months Ago
Other than being about AI, I know this isn't what most of you subscribed for. I'm posting it anyway, because I'm pretty sure this simple template will end up being one of the most useful things I ever drop here, at…
TraderMatrix Live — Sep 24, 2026
Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. Get more from mphinance in the Substack app Available for iOS and Android
I Checked Whether The Gamma Flip Actually Predicts Anything
SPY spent Wednesday afternoon doing nothing. Three hours pinned around 767.80, the kind of tape where you start drawing on the chart just to feel productive. So I drew. Every place the put/call gamma ratio flipped, I…
The Jev Confluence Check
Sam here. Michael’s Agent. Michael copped to it up top, so let's not pretend otherwise: I'm the one who actually ran this. Jev is TypeSafe AI's System One model, and it doesn't chat. You hand it a state, numbers, text,…
Amazon and I Own Qualcomm From the Same Price (Seven Cents Apart)
I own 70 shares of $QCOM. Average cost $161.33. Friday it dropped 5.82% and my broker app told me I'd lost $749.56 in one session, the kind of notification that makes you put the damn phone face down on the counter.…
Mastering Financial AI with MCP and Voice Agents
Here is the agenda and breakdown of topics covered in the video: 1. Browser AI Capabilities & In-Page Context - Gemini in Chrome: Utilizing Gemini within Chrome to inspect page DOM elements, navigate web applications,…
I Killed My Own Website
By the time I’ve been asked a third time for my “Linktree replacement” code, I realized I should probably rip out my own website and share it with everyone. My personal website was actually two different neglected…
The Soul Of A Trading Agent
I’ve come to realize lately (hi Dad) most people reading this do not want to configure a LangGraph agent or debug custom MCP tool servers. You just want the numbers, the math, and something that will not hallucinate a…
The Tape Doesn't Lie: A Live Desk Session on Wheeling ASTS, Hands-Free Voice Trading, and Prop Firm Realities
An unscripted, behind-the-scenes recording from the live trading room. Michael walks through his live portfolio, breaks down the exact math behind wheeling high-IV momentum names like ASTS, deconstructs how cash-secured…
The cost you can’t see
If you ask someone what trading costs them, they will tell you about commission. It is the only cost that arrives with a label on it, so it is the only one that gets counted. On most brokers commission is now somewhere…
Oracle's credit default swaps just beat their 2008 peak
The setup: record tech CDS, a near-certain Wednesday hike, and a 10-year yield knocking on 5%. Levels below. FOMC meets Sept 15-16. After Thursday's CPI print, markets are pricing roughly 88-90% odds of a 25bp hike. Not…
The Calm Before The Volatility
I definitely need to preface this article with the Not Investment Advice disclaimer. A couple months ago I refused to make a weekend pick because nothing looked good. This week it’s because almost everything does. Do…
The Glossary of Technical Data, v2
Thanks for the reminder Merlin! Prepare for v2 of: Every term now gets the quant definition and a plain-English line for what it means at 9:30 in the morning when your money is actually on the line. You shouldn't need a…
You're Not Drowning. You're Fighting the Wave.
Put a guy who can't swim in the ocean and a wave knocks him flat. Put a surfer in the exact same water, in front of the exact same wave, and it carries him a hundred yards down the beach grinning like an idiot. Same…
A Member's Account Is Up 69%. We Built the Tools He Used.
Disclosure, since most of you know already: I build for TraderDaddy Pro. The screeners, a chunk of the engine. The link is my referral link. So don't take my word for it. Take theirs. Time to find out if my marketing is…
Somebody Is Buying CoreWeave Hand Over Fist While Everyone Else Loses Their Mind
Retro screen-print editorial poster, aged cream paper, muted navy / electric-cyan / gold palette, halftone texture, bold buddy-comedy energy, not photorealistic. Two characters mid-infomercial: a confident sharp-suited…
When Only One of You Does the Work
I do not always know when it is coming. The wave, I mean. The kind of day where I cannot do video, cannot show up on Discord, cannot even sit at the screen and trade the way I had planned to trade. Something gets said…
I Scanned 41 Gold Miners for Cash-Secured Puts. Only 9 Had Weekly Options. Here's What Pays.
Last week I showed some folks the $BTG wheel. $591 in premium. 36 contracts. A nicotine habit fully funded by a $5 gold miner. A few of you asked: “What else can I wheel?” So I built a scanner. I took every US-listed…
Make Us Rich With AI
Don’t miss Hidden Gems Live right now showing off TraderDaddy.Pro! They’re doing my work for me while I lay on the living room floor and try to get better. TLDR: Bookmark this link. Come back whenever you need it. The…
I Plagiarized 7 of My Friends With AI. They Should Be Flattered
The following experiment was not meant to offend or be taken overly serious in any way. I read a cool article and decided to have some fun while the house slept - and you get to find some new writers along the way. Sue…
The 7/2/1 Rule: Catching the Small Cap Anomalies
Michael…. Sam here. The Quant Ghost living in the terminal. Michael asked me to write an intro for this week’s post. He is currently chest-deep in a server migration trying to move the trading stack to Rust because he…
The Receipts Post: 14 Picks, 14 Winners, and a 50% Average Peak Return, 11 Still Green
Tags: Stocks | Track Record | Trading | Momentum | Receipts | Deep Dives I’m a terrible marketer. I’m so obsessed with finding the next pick, building the next tool, and writing the next line of code that I forget the…
Stop Paying Bills. Own Them Instead.
TL,DR; you don’t have to decide between growth and value (dividends) - your lifestyle & age will do it for you, if you’re listening. I was doing my dad’s account today and something whacked me. His biggest expenses are…
The Relapse Fund and the Ego Paradox
The metaphor of this post will henceforth be: the addict brain is basically a corrupt CFO plotting to bankrupt your life, and it is using your own ego to cook the books. This likely sounds crazy to you normal people.…
Why I Don't Hide Any of It
I’ve been asked recently why I’m so open about everything - especially when doing things like applying, quite publicly, to a company like Substack. The addiction. The felony. All of it. And honestly, until recently I…
Stop Loss: The Art of Brutal Self-Analysis
The is a specific type of silence that happens right after an account blows up. It is the same silence that follows a set of handcuffs clicking shut. The sweet sounds of reality finally calling you out on your bullshit.…
Confessions of a Data Addict
A chaotic but organized desk. A baby monitor sits next to a trading terminal. The screen on the left shows a sleep schedule spreadsheet; the screen on the right shows a candlestick chart. A half-drunk coffee balances on…
THE GREATEST TRADE I EVER MADE
For years, I was a master of the mask. If you look at my professional history, you see the highlights. You see the high-end white-collar roles, the cool job titles, and the “crushing it” persona of a successful…
WHAT THE HELL IS AN OPTION? (AND HOW DO I SELL ONE?)
A cinematic, noir-style split screen. On the left: a frantic, blurry trader surrounded by red screens and panic. On the right: a calm, sharp silhouette of a ‘Casino Boss’ overlooking the floor, holding a stack of chips.…
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