MayoPete [he/him, comrade/them] @hexbear.net

4w ago

I'm becoming a finance bro because IDK what else to do

I don't know what to do with my life. My local organizing is in limbo and I'm not sure I want to keep doing it for several reasons. I don't have a job, lost mine when my campaign work officially ended on 12/1. I used to write code for a living but really don't want to go back into it. It's not what I want to do for a living. Also....

Capitalism is dumb. Really really stupid. I hate how there are so many people busting their butts working in Amazon warehouses or meat packing plants, or those kids mining rare metals in Africa, making scraps and actually making all of these modern Capitalist treats possible. And then there's people who are clicking a few buttons on a stock broker app and pulling in thousands of dollars just like that!

Actually working for an honest wage feels like a scam at this point. I get to be pushed around, mentally distressed (hooray Autism) and eventually stressed out to the point of burning out for whatever wage I "agree" to take (aka whatever "the market" says I'm worth). OR I can turn the trading I'm doing into a "system" and hone it to a point where I can pull in $300-500 per day making trades on the market.

I'm not even talking about a fancy trading strategy with a bunch of indicators or other nonsense. I'm just scalping SPY, buying Call or Put options at a certain point and selling them when they go up in price by 20 cents. 25 contracts x .20 profit / share / contract = $500 - $25 in broker fees = $475. In theory I could run this every day and be in and out of my trade within minutes. The full strategy has risk management rules and then the "hard part" is picking the right entry point for each trade.

I'll be running a back test on this simple plan but I know from actually doing it on a smaller scale that it works. It's so dumb how I can make (and lose) a month's rent on a single trade.

It's disgusting. On one hand I am glad I have this "gift" of hyper-focus so that I can dig into topics like day trading and figure it out. OTOH there's a lot of jealousy over people who I see out and about as "normal" and knowing I'm not going to be them. Part of me wishes I could just deal with a 9-5 job like most people and maybe empty my mind of Politics. I'd be less informed but maybe happier?

The other thing that bothers me is that Capitalism is pushing me towards this route. I'd rather be spending my time learning how to make music, mixing with the gear I have, reading some of these theory and history books that are piling up, or doing something actually good for society. However I need money to survive and after going through plenty of really bad programming jobs I guess I'd rather try to make money on my own. So here I am, becoming the financial equivalent of a river leech, sucking some blood from my host each day, and those hosts being parasites themselves, those stock prices rising from stealing the labor value of everyone possible, charging as much as possible, screwing over everyone as much as they can get away with.

81 comments

OTOH there's a lot of jealousy over people who I see out and about as "normal" and knowing I'm not going to be them.
Idolizing neurotypical people is silly and we autistic people are cooler and better
Part of me wishes I could just deal with a 9-5 job like most people and maybe empty my mind of Politics.
Result-based 9-5 jobs that are 100% remote aren't so bad. There's the expectation that I'm online between 9 and 5 PM, but a cron job I made opens the chat program at 9 for me and I wake up hours later
- a cron job I made opens the chat program at 9 for me and I wake up hours later
  Fuck that's sick as hell. Salute.
- but a cron job I made opens the chat program at 9 for me and I wake up hours later
  Love it! I should have done something like this when I had the job that used Microsoft Teams because even though everyone says "we don't micromanage" if I have to use the bathroom for more than 5 minutes there's the "are you online" ping waiting for me when I get back :/
  
  Yep, a "click Slack every 2 minutes" script is an absolute must. My boss is mad if Slack shows me as away and I don't answer them, but ever since I started using the script, they're patient
  
  Wait wtf is this real? I have a trams-based email job where I'm supposed to be online at certain times, but nobody is actually warchityhat closely. I would lose my mind if I started getting messages like that.
  
  This is why you need a mouse jiggler.
- I would be wary of idolizing any particular neurological condition.
  You wanna know who else is on record idolizing autism? Demon incarnate, Peter Thiel. Don't be irl Sheldon.
  
  I would be wary of idolizing any particular neurological condition.
  the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
  Don't be irl Sheldon.
  Don't compare autism blackface with autistic people

Come on dude you definitely know what else to do, you just don't want to do it and you'd rather work very little and extract surplus value in the most abstract way imaginable. Hey if you want to do that, do it, but don't try to fish for sympathy by posting about it, like at least have some fucking decency.
- “I don’t want my surplus value stolen anymore because I’m smart and aware it’s happening, so now I’ll just do it to everyone else” isn’t the flex you think it is.
  
  I'm not claiming to be a good person. I'm a product of Capitalism. According to that system people doing financial work are more valuable than people who drive ambulances. It's fucked up and wrong and it's not changing anytime soon.
  Sorry to be pessimistic. I hope people are waking up. Maybe Luigi sparked something?
- Man if I had 25 thousand dollars lying around I'd try to get a real job that is actually worthwhile
  
  Funny how this economic system devalues the most important jobs.
  Everyone wants to make $ streaming but no one wants to be a water quality engineer for their town. Feeding people is low wage work. Most Healthcare jobs are low-medium wage OR have such high hoops to qualify for they're basically blocked off to people who aren't rich already...
- What are you talking about? I don't know what else to do.
  I'm not going to work at Walmart just because it's an "honorable" or "honest" way to make money. That's nonsense that Capitalists propagandize us with. There's NO ethical exchange under our system. Either someone else is getting exploited or I am being exploited or both are happening at the same time.
  you'd rather work very little
  Of course! Why don't you? Do you really want to spend most of your life in a dreary office, stuck in traffic, or in a warehouse moving boxes around? Or staring at a computer screen all day to write some shit code that no one actually uses?
  I don't care if society thinks I'm lazy... I just want to enjoy this time I have and if I can figure out how to cheat my way out of the rat race I'm going to take it.
  
  There's NO ethical exchange under our system. Either someone else is getting exploited or I am being exploited or both are happening at the same time.
  Bro are you actually trying to argue there's no ethical difference between being exploited and being the exploiter? Like come on, I can't fucking stop you from doing what you plan on doing and sure, in all honesty I can't say I wouldn't do the same, but I'd at least feel that tiny bit of shame to not post about it and try to argue capitalism has somehow forced you into becoming a day trader and that you are just another sad victim of late stage capitalism. Fuck off
  
  A job isn't just a place where you exchange your labor for money. It's a chance to familiarize/connect yourself with the world, to extend yourself socially, maybe peek under the hood of the economy and learn some of its inner workings (this is my #1 motivating factor), and radicalize/organize people in the workplace. If you're not super into the current organizing you're doing, day trading is not going to give you any openings for organizing. If you don't know what to do with your life, and you do the minimum to stay afloat, you run the risk of becoming a guy who does 5 hours of day trading a week to keep himself alive, and nothing else.
  Also, 120 million people in this country (and probably a constant 40% of the population in most core countries) put up with a shitty job or a bullshit job. Saying "I don't want a job where I get pushed around, but I also don't want to do the high-salaried job I'm trained to do, I'm just going to make a living with this financial investment that objectively does nothing useful" is being picky to a level that most people lack even the opportunity for. My ambition is to work (and get exploited) for 10 more years, to the point where I can own a house outright and share it with comrades, and never really have to work after that. If you wanted to cut yourself off from capitalism almost completely and live in communal luxury on a land project, where you put in 3 days of farm work per month, there are a bunch of places where you could do that too. I've lived on one myself, and the only reason why I didn't stay there permanently is because of my personal mission to organize in urban areas.

a lot of us have to deal with a shit 9-5 job and haven’t “emptied our heads of politics”. Do what you want but don’t think many of us working crushing jobs in sectors like service or hospitality aren’t acutely aware of how much it sucks and how much of our labor’s surplus value is being stolen. Do what you want but don’t think you’re uniquely harmed by drudge work in a way that others are not.
- we are all harmed by capitalism on this glorious day!

I would be highly skeptical of easy money in stock market (there are millions of dipshits trying to do the same). If you take 1% on trade, what is your probability of catastrophic loss (guess arriving otm)? 1%? Congratulations, you'll get boned sooner or later. Risk management rules if you haven't actually done it is wish casting, risks of slipping in thin market and actual realized losses compared to feely-wise "i can exit when i want"
Aside from that, likely in the west, not the first or the last
- Day trading stocks and options is just MLM for dudes.
  
  There are definitely lots of people trying to sell courses about this. Most of that seems to be voodoo magic BS around series of indicators and watching candle patterns or whatever.
  Unlike MLMs there's definitely real money to be made from smart trading. It makes me feel dumb that I didn't learn this stuff a decade ago.
- Honestly if you can live really lean, working a full-time modest job for 5 years or so and putting all your non-essential expenses in an index fund will allow you to live entirely off capital gains from those savings by year 6. This is also a form of leeching, but it's more guaranteed/stable, and accessible to more people.
  If you find someone to team up with, in most places you could afford a down payment on a house within 3 years, and you could sustain it by working just enough to pay the property taxes once the mortgage is done. $4000 a year takes less than 10 hours a week to cover.

So your plan is to momentum trade SPY 0DTE's?
You might read the RDTE prospectus to understand how the other side of the table makes money off of you. As a matter of fact I would urge you to, instead of buying 0DTE's (lottery tickets), consider profiting off of that time decay and market mispricing by WRITING 0DTE's and synthetically covering with a deep ITM long dated call. That's the essence of the RDTE ticker. It makes money by selling slightly OTM 0DTE's
- You people are making this shit up
  
  It's all made up, the stock market is a work of fiction inspired by a true story at best
  
  My Little Profits: Finance is Magic
- Not sure I have the capital or the options level to write 0DTEs but I'll look into it. I'd like to open some "Poor Man's Covered Calls" on a different ticker but my broker isn't recognizing the long Call options and is trying to make me own shares before writing Calls. I need to talk to their support folks and sort it out.
  
  Could just leverage up on XDTE (SPY), QDTE (~SPY100), RDTE(RUS2000) and leave them to write the synthetic covered calls for you? They do weekly dividends and seem to be around $0.25 a week for a $40-50 share..
  Probably not quite the income you're looking for but much lower risk of ruin since they're actually hedged against downside risk
  Idk I think you might not be understanding the risk of your strategy, OTM 0DTE's are inherently losing value every minute as they tick closer to expiry. Time decay is massively amplified since they're at the end of their life. You can be right about direction and still lose your ass simply because it didn't move fast enough.
  You enter into the contract from the start at a disadvantage because you pay for the IV, someone somewhere collects a premium to write you the contract. Like the house already has an edge right from the start, so not only do you need to overcome that but you also somehow have to time your entries and exits in a way that actually nets money before the contracts blow up in your face.
  Either way good luck, don't put more than you can afford to lose on the line because you're playing a dangerous game of leveraged hot potato
- So your plan is to momentum trade SPY 0DTE's?
  I've learned that the dumbest trades are often the best ones to take. The markets don't make sense.
  This account was funded by GME, and they should have gone bankrupt 🤷‍♂️
  Don't worry, only the world's economic futures are traded on markets like this everyday... what could go wrong 🙃

You were around for meme stocks in 2020 but are still seriously trying to do this?
I could run this every day and be in and out of my trade within minutes.
You may make $300 a day on the short term but you will not make $300 a day on average. The average part is what kills this dream. On average you won't make as much as you would at the toilet cleaning job or the shelf stocking job. This is by design. You're not allowed out of the class unless you have enough real property or you exploit the labor of others (preferably both).
The sell-out that will uplift you out of drudgery isn't stocks, it's rent-seeking and exploitation. Thus you must transform from finance bro to real estate bro or entrepreneur bro. Capitalism is nefarious in the way it makes you choose between being the exploiter vs the exploited. You can do one or the other. Only one is the ticket to winning capitalism and it's the one that will take your leftist soul.
- You were around for meme stocks in 2020 but are still seriously trying to do this?
  Yeah, my mind kind of latches onto things like this. I've always been market-curious because
  and GME was the thing that got me to stop thinking about doing it and start actually trading.
  I appreciate the concern and hope you're wrong. A lot of people are making silly amounts of numbers doing this. In fact, there's a lot of dumb ways people are making money right now:
  Selling NFTs
  Crypto "projects"
  Commissions off AI "content"
  Running online casinos for Counter Strike cosmetics
  And that's just the new stuff. There's still timeshares, scammers calling our grandparents, MLMs, etc.
  This system rewards the people who screw over other people.

Investing in stocks during a recession is a pretty bold move.
- Its probably the best time if you've got the cash, stock prices should be lower during the recession.
  
  Or you could do... literally anything else.
  
  He's trading options, so it's not like he's getting the value of a lower price point

If you can, please I implore you to try doing what I'm doing and looking into working in healthcare (not insurance but real healthcare)>
I may not be having a 24/7 party at work, but it's recession-proof and porks have figured out how to make it a permanent recession for the working class and a permanent boom for them. All the tech jobs that got lost even though the rich have been having the best five years of their lives since COVID simply because "We just don't need that many". Best of all, it's all part of my attitude towards work: I want the least annoying way to pay rent, and no porky, I won't start a business stop telling me to.
- Part of my radicalization was seeing how little EMTs got paid. Right wingers love to worship "first responders" but don't give a darn about the people who literally drive your sick grandma to the hospital & provide critical care on the way. How TF are ambulance staff getting paid $15/hour for such important life saving work?!?
  It's capitalism... I made more this morning than someone who saves lives makes in a week. It's gross and dumb and I hope for more Luigis to deal with those responsible because revolution ain't happening where I live.

https://hexbear.net/post/164752?scrollToComments=false
- Look, I'm not saying you should flat out rob a bank. But something not many people realize is that, in leftist history, there have almost always been folks out there appropriating funds to keep these movements alive. Something that is largely missing nowadays, despite claims of Soros from the right. I very, very much recommend checking out that Lucio doc I link in that post, it's fascinating because that dude and his crew were financially supporting movements across the globe for decades. Now again, I'm not saying you should be robbing banks, but those finances are very much missing in our modern movement. And if you're someone that understands the markets and crypto and all that, then you probably have information and ideas in your head that, at the very least, others could use to "acquire" funds and anonymously move and share those funds. Also check out that paper I link at the bottom about hackers robbing banks or look into how the DPRK is supposedly stealing and moving crypto. I bet you'll find it fascinating.

If you can code try to get a cushy remote work job, you'll have plenty of free time for your hobbies

It's never unethical to scrape a few bucks off some bank. The trick is actually winning, and not losing all your hair from the stress of day trading.
Also if it literally is as simple as "sell at +20% or -40%", you could probably automate it and let it go with small amounts of cash for a while, just see how it goes according to the rules you're setting for yourself.

You aren't the first, and won't be the last person who thought they figured out a surefire way to make money day trading. Wall Street firms have access to so much more information, cheaper trades, faster execution, and can front run you if you're using Robinhood or one of the free trading platforms.
Maybe you're that .0001% that actually figured it out. I hope you are, but please be careful not to delude yourself.
- I know. Maybe this is sustainable, but realistically this is something to make income while figuring out where I'm going next.
  And yeah, I avoid Robinhood because their system makes people get bad fills. Losing a few cents on each option fill adds ups fast. I have a "boomer" broker that charges $.50 per contract but actually sends my order immediately.
  
  fyi all brokers rely on third party companies for id verification, behaviour analysis, analytics etc for kyc and fraud prevention and most of the times those third party companies tend to be israeli like the one used by ibkr.

I know a loooot of people in renewable energy and public health considering jumping to finance. Anything remotely good for society in this upcoming administration will be non viable careers.
I cannot wait to leave. Please God let my work visa get approved.

I would like to learn more about your trading strategy. I am assuming you would need thousands in cash to get started, and you would need to deal with day-trader rules, but I am really ignorant on this stuff. Would you be willing to educate?
- Yeah, absolutely. Happy to help because if this works I want other comrades to find a way out of the rat race!
  Pattern Day Trading: The rule is that if your account value is less than $25k, if you are buying and selling the same position within the same trading day you will receive a "pattern day trader flag". After a few of these (I believe 5 within a few day period) the brokers have to lock your account temporarily. It's an SEC rule and not something the brokers themselves are choosing to do. I got really lucky during the GameStop fiasco and have an account that is large enough to ignore the Pattern Day Trader rule. It's not a brag, just peace of mind knowing I can pay rent for a while and figure things out. Money = time and I'm very fortunate to have this time.
  Cash needed to start: Based on how tomorrow's option chain looks right now I'll need to put down around $4800 (see image) in order to purchase 25x Calls at the $587 price point. My strategy involves buying the next dollar amount above the current price when the next dollar "out of the money" is close to becoming "in the money", then when it goes "in the money" wait for the positions to increase by at least 20 cents and place an order to sell. This is going to change day by day and is really going to depend on where SPY goes in pre-trading hours, if it is trending up or down, etc.
  
  I've had plenty of +$100-200 days trading around $1k with this plan and I'm ready to try scaling it up.
  What makes this strategy promising is SPY usually moves by .5% each day, so it fluctuates in a few dollar range. I'm not trying to hit home runs here, just make base hits as often as possible. I have to refine the risk management plan because on some days SPY will drop by a couple percent and then these daily options become worthless.
  This is where people on Reddit tend to screw up! It's easy to manage winners. Worst case is you take profit and leave some extra profit on the table. Managing losing trades is a different thing entirely. There's a lot of phycological work needed to keep a cool head when the trade goes red. For starters, don't put your entire account up for trade on a daily basis! I'm trying to trade in small amounts so that if I lose a trade I'm only losing under 2% of my account's value. I'm going to increase my trade size because I need an income replacement right now but ideally I keep trades small so that I can survive a few bad days.
  
  I'm glad you have the patience for this, because while I love most number-heavy stuff, this feels like to me it would be absolutely dismal.
  
  Thanks for this. It's quite easy to understand your writing.
  One thing I want to understand about you wrote is what you mean when you say those "daily options become worthless." You said you would need to buy $4800 worth of calls on SPY. Combining these two statements, does that mean you could have days where you gain $100 - $200 and other days where you lose $4800?

I don't know shit about the stock market but if you can get that bag I say go for it. Spend your free time making music and organizing, give some portion of your ill-gotten gains to mutual aid.

you could get into sports betting instead
- i was hoping someone would mention that lol
- Arbitage betting is tempting but after looking into it the profit potential is just not there. It's not sustainable in the long run.

Another reason why I want to make this work: I don't like people.
It's been this way my whole life. I don't get along with other people, or more accurately no matter how much I try to please others or help others I just get shit on. Of course I don't want to deal with people after being bullied and shunned all my life! People suck.
At least with this it's just me and the screen. I don't need to try to analyze my boss' passive-aggressive messaging or try to constantly figure out what everyone wants. I can just focus on what I'm doing and plan for the few possibilities rather than deal with irrational creatures getting in my way every day.

If you're so good at stocks, why not makes as much money as possible and donate it to do good? Prove all the critical people here wrong by donating to left wing orgs and the Palestinians and random people's GoFundMes.
- I'd love to get to that point!

81 comments