My Journey into Trading: The Foundation of the Triad Method I first fell in love with the markets in 1995, during my junior year of college, following them daily with the eagerness of someone who’d found a new passion. Right after graduation, I joined a young finance company, just a year old and headquartered in the beautiful Tahoe City on the shores of Lake Tahoe. We financed business equipment for small to medium-sized businesses across the country, and I became the 12th employee. Over the next two years, we expanded to over 200 people, with a benefits package that included an annual ski pass to Squaw Valley. My friends couldn’t believe I had a real finance job in Tahoe while skiing or snowboarding at least 50 days a year. Powder days even had a rule: if there was at least a foot of snow and you hit your numbers, you could hit the slopes in the morning and come to work after lunch. Over three years, I saved up $10,000 annually and grew it into a $50,000 brokerage account. By 2000, my desire to trade was so strong that I left my dream job and moved to the Bay Area to trade full-time. I joined Bright Trading, needing a $25,000 capital post to access 10:1 margin and earn my Series 7 license. I read widely—technical analysis, option pricing models, Van Tharp, Trading in the Zone—and even enrolled in a program on technical analysis and the Wyckoff Method at Golden Gate University, completing coursework on weekends while trading all day at Bright’s small, gritty office. However, Bright Trading had limitations: despite their roots as former options market makers, they restricted us to equities, as they prioritized the high turnover stock trading generated. Determined to diversify into equities, options, and futures, I decided to go out on my own. I wrote a business plan and partnered with a fellow trader, Suneel, from a farming family near Sacramento. Together, we aimed to launch a trading arcade under a Joint Back Office (JBO) agreement with Sage Clearing, requiring $1 million in collateral to operate. I found space in San Francisco’s Exchange Building, set up desks, monitors, and PCs for ten terminals, and we became the first arcade in the city to offer equities, options, and futures with cross-margin capabilities.