Sep'24 Options results + 4 years life reflection + Train your Mind

I will write about three main agenda topics today:

1. Options Sep'24 Month To Date and Year To Date results

2. Reflecting back on life four years ago versus now; what were the struggles, what I did about them, what I learnt from them

3. Importance of cultivating a healthy mindset

1 - Options Sep'24 MTD / YTD Reflections and Results

Reflections

Pen to paper, I wrote down every single trade I executed and closed out for Sep'24, summarizing the overall results for the month, as I always did as a conscious habit but more so to keep track on how I am progressing over the years. If you read my previous post, you'll know that Sep'24 was a "miracle" month. Well, as you'll soon know below, we had a very decent profitable Sep'24; that isn't the reason why it was a "miracle" month.

It was a miracle month because it taught me that life is a series of downs and ups, troughs and peaks, darkness and light... it taught me that most of the time (if not all), bad things happen for a reason. Bad things are bestowed upon us from the heavens to teach us something, to build our character, harden our resolve.

Noticed how I wrote the "bad" elements before the "good (darkness before light) ?

See Things for What They Are - Intense Realism

Understand: as an individual you cannot stop the tide of fantasy and escapism sweeping in a culture. But you can stand as an individual with a stronghold against this trend and create power for yourself.

Most people want a strong and healthy body (winning the game of health), make a ton of money (game of finance), have good relationships (game of social), have a sense of purpose (game of spirituality) et cetera... these things cannot simply be within your reach, they must all be earned.

Days of work, weeks progress, months of reflections, years of accumulated wisdom -- all in the form of applied effort and hardships.

Your body won't get strong without the discomfort from working out.

Your mind won't get smarter if you don't delete mindless social media and read a book.

You won't make more money if you don't take some actionable steps like polishing your resume, networking with people, investing hours to upskill, seek out mentors.

You most certainly won't improve your social standing in life if you don't get out of your house all day.

Through it all, you'll fail a lot of times. I failed more times than I can remember; I accept that as reality now, if I fail I'll simply shrug it off, rest for a couple days and get back to trying.

Consider it war. You must fight this tendency of expecting a reward without you having to earn it and move in the opposite direction. You must turn outward and become a keen observer of all that is around you, fighting all these fantasies that are thrown at you. You are tightening your connection to the environment. You should aim for clarity, not escape and confusion. Moving in this direction will instantly bring you power among so many dreamers.

This is the reason why I believe that the "bad" has to come first before the "good". You will gain a profound and genuine appreciation of the good once you obtained it. That is the paradox of life. You find good in the bad and bad in the good.

In September, we had a trade which pulled us down, and we stayed resilient, fought back and bounced back up the next day. I sucked it up, accepted it, meditate on it for an hour and then flicked the switch in my brain "back to work now, let's focus on the solutions".

When we started doing the Arete custom strategy, it is a very passive strategy which meant that we execute the trade and literally wait for 3-4 weeks before closing it off.

We had good results doing that.

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Being genuinely interested in options trading, it was too passive for me. Hence, I decided to add some active elements into it by trading the $SPX and $SPY. This has worked out well. I will let the results speak for themselves below. What I really like about Arete is our simplified approach towards using Options as another source of income. We did $4,400 in Sep'24. This was more than my monthly job salary 4 years ago !

Sep'24 MTD results

Sep'24 YTD results

For illustration purposes, let's assume you have an account of $20K. By now, if you followed and executed all my trades you will be sitting on ~$27,000. Assuming you did just 1 contract set for every single trade and sized your risk properly.

As you can see, for the first 7 months of 2024, I didn't really get the results I expected. Monthly results were mostly flat. As much as I want to talk about why or how these came to be, all I can conclude in Sep'24 is I am glad we continue to focus on getting the weekly results and focusing on what matters - managing risk and having patience.

With a 20K account, that's a 35% return, with a 10K account that's a 70% return. Well, even if you have 50K and played it really safe by only doing 1 contract, that's a 14% (7,000/50,000) return YTD.

2 - Year 2024 vs Year 2020

The reason why I want to share this real personal story with the audience today is because I want to inspire you to take action, and to show you that time is the greatest equalizer.

I remember vividly sitting on my room floor, internalizing that I was jobless at that time having graduated from Covid as the Covid batch in university. The contract which I had signed which will land me a full time role in a prestigious boutique consulting firm back then didn't turn out well. Furthermore, I pursued a degree related to aviation engineering, that very industry most impacted by the pandemic.

I knew deep inside I always had an interest in tech. I made the decision to pivot to tech by taking the risk of picking up the skills required through a series of online courses and case studies for practice. I knew I had to work through the technical side of things from square one having no comp science or analytics background. What I visualized and saw ahead of me back then was literally this:

• "Ok, I have to dedicate minimally 15-20 hours per week, on top of any weekly routine activity I was already doing, to learn tech. That's 960 hours a year."

• "I have to start from zero. A painful, arduous journey."

• "Changing industry would mean I might have to start with the lowest salary band again."

Some the most important lessons I learnt in life is that 1) if you really wanted something, you can have it 2) focus on small things and getting them done and the big stuff will take care of itself. 3) Training is Never a wrong decision. If you are rich, you should train. If you are poor, you should train. If you are free, you should train. If you drink/smoke, you should train. If you don't drink/smoke, you should train.

We cannot escape that hard work is always the correct decision. There is no time in any scenario where working hard is going to be the wrong answer.

Close to a decade ago when I tried to pick up options, it was tough too. Learning the theory of it is only 50% of the battle, the other 50%, which is the one which matters, is how to convert that knowledge and turn that into profits. In a sense, I have developed to some degree a level of pragmaticism and realism in my approach. When I learn tech, I made sure to go beyond certifications and "watching tutorials" to execution and building stuff. That has always served me well, and continues to do so.

I always joke to my close friends who know my story -- that $500 I invested in the online course gave me the greatest ROI.

Top 3 struggles and how I used my mind to overcome them

• Learning the skill and not immediately getting an ROI for it. I read articles and know of friends who landed a tech job immediately after graduation and making well over $100,000 a year. If they were based in US, that figure can easily go up to $150,000 (excluding their higher taxes). I know some of you might say that the average income for the same industry in different countries will be different; if you compare tech jobs in Europe, you might land at $80,000. That's correct, but I don't want to settle for average. If I am already putting myself through so much pain, why not aim higher ?

  • I told myself that the first thing I needed to do is to get one foot into the door of data and tech. Then work my work up from there. That was my strategy. And if I didn't achieve the income yet, everything I did will be classified under Sweat Dividends - work which I put in that will not payout immediately now but will do so in the future.

• Staying consistent. The reality is, motivation gets the plane engine worked up and ready to take off, but consistency is what sustains the flight. Trust me, there are so many days which I felt like giving up. Why am I churning out analysis, building dashboards, learning code on a weekday night after my normal job, after my workout, after dinner, when I can just chill.

  • The pain of knowing I can achieve so much more if I can push through my laziness and reluctance superseded ALL my desire for momentary comfort in that moment. In a way, I started to operate from an angle of honor and duty rather than my emotions. I didn't feel like doing it, but I did it anyway. I learnt that while I was serving the military, it felt nice to get that feeling back again. Every. Single. Day. I visualized myself... landing a decent six figure role (from my job, excluding my options and other investments). I didn't want to be average. I wanted to inspire others and make my ancestors proud.

• Operating in a environment of risk and uncertainty. Had I stayed in my non-tech role, I would probably be making around $70K comfortably without any real need to hustle, since I had a relevant degree and internship experience prior. I made much lesser than 70K at the start when I get my first foot into data/tech, which you'll soon find out below. And then I had peers already 1-2 years in their non-tech careers making more than what I was making. This made me question my decisions.

  • I always believed that my time will come. Because the potential I had to make more was way higher. Similar to options, when I started making $200 with $5,000 donkey years ago, that opened up the door to make $4,000 a month now. It is the acquired skill and potential to scale that skill which can seriously create some exponential growth. With the advice of one of my career mentor, I kept my head down and continued to work hard, help others and give more than I take.

All in all, here's are rough figures across the 4 years, if you want to know the exact figures, ping me on telegram. I will provide ranges here but these should give you a good idea of the progression.

2020: <$40K

2021 : <$70K

2022: <$80K

2023: <$120K

2024: <$160K

I did a short video to commemorate this little milestone of mine --

https://rumble.com/v5hn7q9-5x-my-income-in-4-years-2020-to-2024.html

3 - Cultivation of Healthy Mindset

You see, so much can change in 4 years... just 4 years ! If you have read till the end to this point, I thank you. If you truly and genuinely want to know what are the things I read / listen to to feed my brain with the good stuff, ping me on Telegram. I reserve the inner layer stuff only for those who really truly want it, and can accept that life can be really fun and good... if you embrace reality and snap out of fantasy.

How you view the world utterly and absolutely shapes how you react to the world. If you always think you're unlucky, how life is unfair... you give negativity the power over your life. You should instead have the opportunist mindset, learn how to "turn shit into gold", turn your gifts into something useful.

How people view you is all down to how you view things. There's actually very few things in life which we have any control over. And the best way is to learn it the hard way -- real world experiences and real interactions and not from a screen on the phone.

Finally, I will end off this post giving gratitude to the fathers and brothers I never had, whether in the form of books, podcasts, the gym, in office, or anything in between... especially during the days where I had nothing to my name.

• Robert Greene

• K T

• H. Cliff

• Uncle V

• B.A.D

• Johnny FD

• Mark D

• K K

• Q M

• Mike Chang

• S A R

Godspeed, Mr Arete