I test trading strategies with real numbers, and publish every result.

About me

I spent most of my career in uniform as a military officer. I was involved in the running of the logistics behind a number of large national and international events. Along the way I earned a master's degree in the United States and deployed overseas. Since then I've been leading large infrastructure projects. None of it had anything to do with markets, but all of it taught me to think in systems, and that's how I approach trading.

Why "trading at 50"

This isn't my first try. I traded when I was young and never succeeded. I wasn't short of ideas; I was short of discipline. I broke my own rules, and above all I couldn't cut a loss. Now, at 50, I'm going at it again, and this time the goal is as much about breaking those habits and building a better me as it is about the money.

Why I trade

I live in Singapore, which regularly tops the rankings of the world's most expensive cities: first for four years running in Julius Baer's wealth and lifestyle report, and joint first with Zurich in the Economist Intelligence Unit's worldwide cost of living survey. Living here, a salary alone doesn't feel like a plan. I want to build a sustainable income stream and real wealth, so that I can retire comfortably.

Trading is also an intellectual challenge I enjoy. It lets me dig into data, test ideas properly, and find out what actually works, which is usually much less than the internet claims.

The part I didn't expect: my own psychology

As a military officer, I thought I was disciplined. Trading has tested my self-control more than anything I've done, and the same old habits from my younger days are still there. I can design a rule, test it, believe in it, and still break it with real money on the line, then take three more trades to win the loss back.

I now think that following the rules and managing my emotions and state of mind is about 80% of the battle. Creating and testing strategies isn't enough; the psychology matters even more. Reading Trading in the Zone by Mark Douglas changed how I look at every trade, and I'm starting to see it in my own numbers. On my 0DTE trades, the ones I took exactly to plan have made +$5,786; the ones where I broke it have made -$4,556.

How I use AI

I use AI for almost everything here. I mainly use Claude Code to build my backtests and my automated trading systems: the engines that trade the live strategies on paper, the data pipelines behind them, and this website. Work that would once have needed a team of programmers, I can now do in an evening. That's how one person can test this many ideas properly.

In the spirit of being transparent: I also use AI to help write this site, including my journal entries. The trades, the numbers, the decisions and the opinions are mine; AI helps me put them into words, and I check everything before it goes up.

I use it for one more thing, and it's become one of the most useful parts of my trading. After every journal entry, I ask AI to take on the persona of Mark Douglas and review what I did and what I was thinking, then write me feedback in the spirit of Trading in the Zone. That's the review at the end of each entry. They're not his words, and they're always labelled that way. Mark Douglas passed away in 2015, but his book is still teaching traders like me. Bless his soul.