Ray Zhou

Felt inspired to write on X again after attending @TheOneLanceB 's LA trader meetup. First, a shoutout to Lance. I've been trading for 13 years across equities, equity options, crypto perpetuals, and now equity index futures. Lance is the only trading content creator I have ever gained value from, and likely the only one I will ever recommend. He clearly explains many concepts I've internalized over the years into easy-to-digest instructional formats. More impressively, he’s an absolutely generous class act and an amazing event host. I’ve rebranded my X account to focus on trading content. Not sure how often I’ll post, but I promise it will be worth your read. I’m very excited for the year. 2025 was my first full year trading NQ futures, and it was an amazing one. Some personal highlights: - Panic from Deepseek taking over #1 on mobile appstores during the weekend of Sunday overnight session on 1/26 - March - April tariff tantrum - Volatility coming back into the market in November after 7 straight months up I took a long break after late 2022 due to crippling losses from improper risk management, so it was great to get back into the groove of building and executing a new playbook of strategies. A couple of things I’m looking forward to in 2026 include working with 2 friends on automated strategies in NQ futures, and working with 2 friends who are aiming to transition to trading full-time. Transitioning my trading from crypto perpetuals to index futures was the best thing I’ve ever done in life. In short, crypto fees are based on a % of trade size, while futures are a low, flat fee per contract. The fee difference over the course of a year isn’t even close. Index flows are also easier for me to read and trade with accuracy during periods of high volatility. Also markets are closed on weekends. Also 60% of profits are taxed at the long term capital gains rate. Also many more reasons. Lastly, I want to provide a high-level overview of my approach to trading index futures on the intraday timeframe as a primarily short-biased trader. US equity indexes are dominated by a meta around passive buying inflows. The reasons for this are: - Federal Reserve monetary policy causes currency debasement measured as inflation. Their target rate is 2% inflation/year, but in reality, inflation levels run significantly hotter when the Fed is forced into long periods of accommodative policy (like the COVID response). Fiscal overspending also puts them in a permanent bind. Indexes are used to hedge against inflation. - Many large institutional investors are dollar-cost averaging into indexes - The prominent advice given to casual investors investing retirement and non-retirement funds is to dollar-cost average into indexes This means that during bull markets (like the one we’ve been in since 2009), the natural state of the market is to drift higher until there is a reason not to, while volatility as measured by the VIX (volatility index) compresses. This creates long periods where the market trends up and stays “overbought”. There are 2 reasons a bull market stops drifting higher. - A major news catalyst forces a repricing. Many news catalysts don’t matter. Context matters. Having a memory bank for similar news events in the past matters sometimes. It’s a play-by-ear to figure out the duration and severity of each repricing (and the most fun part of the game) - The market becomes so overbought (for so long) that a failed breakout to higher prices starts a period of reactionary aggressive selling and repricing Repricings can be very short or very long, depending on the context. Longer ones become known as a “recession” or “depression”. Repricings are accompanied by an expansionary period in the volatility index. Recent examples: - 2022 was a year-long repricing caused by the Federal Reserve rapidly hiking interest rates to fight the severe inflation caused by the monetary and fiscal response to COVID. - 2024 saw a sharp 1-month repricing due to the Japanese currency crisis - 2025 saw a 3-month repricing due to tariffs and a 1-month overbought repricing in November Ok. So that’s the backdrop for strategy development. As for strategy application, I take my largest positions only during volatile repricing periods. And I mostly avoid other periods. I spend a lot of time on X and watching CNBC to scan for reasons for the market to reprice and continue repricing. Some of my easiest trades have come from identifying a repricing move during the overnight session and taking profit into an obvious New York session opening liquidity sweep. That’s not to say the other periods can’t provide decent trading opportunities. They just aren’t worth the time to pursue for my manual discretionary trading. My work with automated traders this year focuses on automating smaller-scale strategies for long periods of volatility compression – with focus on the second half of the New York trading session. I have an extremely high-conviction macro thesis for the year that I may write about in a future post. I’m completely locked-in this year on executing when the time is right. If all goes well, I’m aiming to have the best trading year of my career (so far). That’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed reading. Until next time ~

@kokev thx

@AstrogationNQ Solid content

@chessNwine 😂😂

Mad Money with Jim Cramer versus Mad Money with Iran

@McBeeHS trollin

@AstrogationNQ Eh… no.

Do the Japanese know about the American tradition of Oreos and ramen?

@chessNwine taco works until it doesn't

(3/3) My point being that Trump is playing the most dangerous game with markets and if the market has finally sniffed it all out, behavioral finance suggests the market could go down even to spite itself.

(1/2) I recall an interview after the 2008 crash where the late economist Anna Schwartz said she thought the market threw up its hands in confusion and crashed because the government was so inconsistent about which bank they saved and which they let fail (Lehman)

becoming cool

@RKRigney i am buying so many games i can't even play them all

@Rayditzfn is cool sword

Regent early game be like: Summon a giant intergalactic sword to one shot your enemies, or call down a million stars Defect early game be like: Gain 4 block and add 2 Poop into your deck or gain 2 energy and add 2 Fart into your deck

i have 64gb of ram, but slightly worse other specs than you. on windows 10, i was experiencing slowdowns running multiple trading platforms (4 monitor setup with 10+ windows) on windows 11, slowdowns are completely gone. i asked grok about this, and it said windows 11 has several targeted improvements in memory management

@Xtrememan25 Think in general, if I play even something like League + have a few Google Chrome tabs, I’m noticing slowdown and lost frames. This is even after I deleted/ uninstalled a lot of programs

This is my current computer that I bought in 2020. Does it need an upgrade? Ideally I’d like a 5800, 64gb ram and an updated cpu. What’s the play?

@PedalCabby @Omiron33 @Oilfield_Rando it really do be like that

@Omiron33 @Oilfield_Rando You don’t get it. Offering those services is HOW they steal half our GDP

I dunno man seems like wars are super easy when the objective is to win and not launder a trillion dollars to your friends in the DC-VA-MD area for decades

@goodalexander @pmarca it really do be like that this month if you only looked at indexes, you couldn't guess the extreme single-stock and sector level volatility

@pmarca meanwhile the VIX will somehow just stay at 15 or so

@TheFlowHorse from a follower perspective, if someone's best content is great, i can let the worst content slide

Fair take, and largely because now everyone is public, saying more things “on record” than ever.

@SowingAlphaSeed @TheOneLanceB @TheFlowHorse @gfc4 in order to not be a pump and dumper, you need to be completely off social media and only be managing your own capital

@SowingAlphaSeed @TheOneLanceB @TheFlowHorse @gfc4 my broader point is that anyone who promotes on any platform is a pump and dumper. orr calling out other pump and dumpers is also a form of promotion as it drives attention to his brand and fund/ETF, where he collects fees. no one in this industry is pure.

WILL DAY TRADERS EVER GET THE RESPECT THE DESERVE? It has been an interesting week following this mega-viral post from @TheFlowHorse and the Market Wizards chapter list post from @gfc4. I’ve come to one conclusion: most mainstream traders on Wall Street or investors at home are unable to fathom the skills of elite traders. Truly, that’s the only thing that can explain the consistent attitude of the quants like @macrocephalopod and money managers like @orrdavid in the face of overwhelming evidence. I’ve verified on Kinfo, Trillium verified me, SMB verified me, and Jack/George reviewed every single one of my brokerage statements. For some, nothing will ever be enough. Historically Market Wizards has been THE gold stamp of trading approval. Yet now, because there is an edition heavily focused on day traders - the quants and money managers lose their shit and assume everything is a fraud now (Jack and George are now “paid shills” 🙄) rather than come to the more sensical conclusion that there are a subset of insanely talented day traders with eye-watering returns!? Here is why - it’s because it invalidates everything their lives stand for. The fact that a security guard, a teenager, a musician, and a young kid from Indiana University can dwarf every achievement they’ve ever dreamed of all by the age of 40 and in many cases by the age of 30. I think it speaks just to how fast the world is changing and how much the boomers will be left behind. This isn’t the world of quants and money managers anymore. This is a world where young kids with drive have the tech and resources to change the world. More than ever, the trailblazers of every industry are becoming younger and younger. The old guard that refuses to believe will only be left behind. And I get it, I sell a course. Traditionally that is associated with grifters and scammers. Yea, well Bitcoin in 2015 was associated with the same. The end result is that the boomers were missing the forest for the trees. Most people would rather bury their head in the sand. Ignore all the evidence. Because it protects their fragile worldview. That doesn’t change reality though. Every single trader in this book provided the receipts. If people don’t want to believe it, that speaks to the quality of what I and others have achieved. My message to you all is the same message that @TheFlowHorse wrote: IGNORE THE HATERS! YOU CAN ACHIEVE UNBELIEVABLE THINGS! My course that I sell is the biggest joke of a business. I will openly admit that. I’ve invested thousands of hours into something that barely pays me minimum wage. But I do it because I truly want to pass on my knowledge and share with you the concepts and insights I’ve learned. Much of that knowledge is 100% FREE. Judge me by the quality of my content rather than the words of the trolls. I don’t mind being mocked. I somewhat mind the credibility and brand of @jackschwager @gfc4 and Market Wizards getting caught in the crossfire. So, how do we win? If you are young and hungry, use the knowledge we all share with you. This IS a new generation. Market Wizards ARE on X and freely sharing that knowledge. The haters laugh, but that is something BEAUTIFUL! It speaks to the accessibility of info today. Use it to become great! Become your own epic story of what we all can achieve when we believe. And if you get hate along the way, keep pushing because it means you’re doing something right! ✊

@asanwal @pitdesi comedy is very subjective to personal taste. impossible to have broad appeal in a movie format. people watch their favorite standup comedians for comedy cravings

I get that westerns and war movies are less intersting to folks, but why do people not like comedies as much? cc @pitdesi

@johnarnold @moseskagan it really do be like that

@moseskagan sounds like it would be tiring to live in a community that fights everything.

One reason I like living in Texas is that pragmatic government decisions like consolidating under-enrolled schools, expanding housing, enabling business investment, licensing autonomous taxis, and keeping taxes low are relatively uncontroversial across the political spectrum.

@gfc4 @jackschwager @Qullamaggie @TheOneLanceB banger lineup, can't wait

The upcoming Market Wizards book is approaching completion. As such, @jackschwager and I have decided to release the names of the traders included in the book and their associated X handles. Here they are: Kristjan Kullamägi @Qullamaggie Lance Breitstein @TheOneLanceB Simon Russo @simonrusso__ Lukas Fröhlich @TheShortBear Phil Goedeker @Tradestl Kelvin Chiu @KC_SilverCape Jason Berry @Positive_Equity Kenny Sharkness of @smbcapital (Kenny has no public X account) Rick Bandazian Jr. @Off_The_Tape Looking forward to sharing the book with the world! If you'd like to pre-order the book, you can do so here: lnk.to/marketwizardsn… For discounted bulk orders (US only) go here: bulkbooks.com/products/marke…