VIDEO: The Trader's Wealth System — turning your trading into lasting wealth - PART 3
This was the finale — and the one built specifically for traders. Part 1 was the mindset. Part 2 was the mechanics. Part 3 was the system — how the two Tonys actually turn trading into wealth:
The Trader’s Wealth System — turning your trading into lasting wealth
This was the finale — and the one built specifically for traders. Part 1 was the mindset. Part 2 was the mechanics. Part 3 was the system — how the two Tonys actually turn trading into wealth: by removing themselves from decisions, keeping everything simple and mechanical, fixing problems one at a time, and converting trading profits into assets that pay them forever.
If you were in the room, this is your cheat sheet. If you’re reading this and weren’t — this is what our members got. Here’s everything we covered.
What we covered
Wealth comes from FEWER decisions — not better ones. This was the thesis of the whole session. “Everybody thinks wealth comes from making better decisions. It doesn’t. It comes from making fewer decisions — but building a system that lets you make those decisions without thinking.” When you pull up an underlying, you already know the mechanics, the rules, the trade. You’re not pulling a rabbit out of a hat. That’s why we built the tools we built — the Put Selector, the hedge/long-Vega finder, the Portfolio Optimizer — every one of them exists to reduce the number of decisions you have to make and hand you the math.
You don’t need one system — you need systems (plural). The amateur wakes up and asks “what should I do today?” — then goes hunting on Twitter, WSJ, and Barron’s for an idea. That rarely ends well. The professional wakes up, glances at their Greeks and their buying power, and already knows how to put the book back in line. Build a system for each lever: your laddered income trades, your buying power, your delta, your theta, your hedges. When each has a rule, the day gets quiet.
Simplicity makes you wealthy. Simple is what you can replicate — and what lets you decide fast. Complicated systems (”if the bird flies here and the duck poops, then you do this“) can’t be followed day in and day out; you miss trades and end up chasing FOMO. Our trades are deliberately simple and directional. The single most complex thing we do is a diagonal — and even that stays mechanical: buy roughly the 40-delta, sell the 20-delta, two-to-four weeks out in the front month. Simple, consistent, correctly sized, following your assumption.
Positioning beats prediction — and it kills the stress. Here’s the amateur’s loop: predict → the prediction creates emotion → you execute on the emotion → you’re stressed all day. Our loop is the opposite: have a system → the system produces the right positioning → be patient and mechanical → take profits → compound. Being accountable helps enormously — because our trades are published to members, we’ve pulled our finger off plenty of bad clicks we’d otherwise have made. If you’re stressed over every single trade, you’re stuck in the prediction loop.
Split your money into two buckets. Today’s money is your protection bucket — Treasuries, BIL, SGOV — and you don’t risk it. Future money is what you invest and take real risk with. The mistake most people make is taking big risk with money they actually need right now. Before any new trade, ask the one question that cuts through everything: “Is this going to increase my long-term wealth — or is it merely entertaining me?”
Solve trading problems one at a time: Name → Prioritize → Solve. Whether it’s a single bad trade or a whole portfolio that’s out of line, the process is the same. (1) Name the problem — too much delta, too much theta, too much extrinsic, too many naked units, too much buying power. (2) Prioritize — pick the one to fix first. (3) Solve it — too much long delta? Sell a call spread, cut a unit, take a profit. You cannot fix every metric with one trade. Fix one thing, reassess, repeat. And when a problem is big, it almost always traces back to breaking a mechanic on entry — usually sizing.
Even making too much money is a problem. If your P&L is swinging hard — even in your favor — you’re not sized right, and money that comes too easily never gets respected. Tony R’s 1987 story made the point: after the crash windfall, instead of blowing it, he bought his exchange seat and a condo — put the profits into productive assets, and that’s what kept the doors open.
Be average — not extraordinary. “I want you to be an average trader. Be more consistent.” For us, “average” doesn’t mean matching the S&P (if that’s all you want, buy SPY or VOO and go play golf). It means producing a multiple of the risk-free rate — 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x — using less capital. And here’s the freeing part: to have extraordinary consistency, you don’t need extraordinary trades. You just have to avoid the giant mistakes — too much delta, too much buying power, too much emotion.
Check your ego. “We don’t want to be right — we want to get rich.” Most trading mistakes come from trying to prove to the market that you were right (the gold-puts-on-every-strike lesson was live and self-inflicted). “The market pays you not for being right — it pays you for being well-positioned by being mechanical.” Your account wants you to win the trade, not win the argument.
Cut through the jargon — it’s just three Greeks. Advisors dress it up (Sharpe ratios, drawdowns, 60/40) to keep your money. Simplify: Theta is the market paying you rent to hold the asset. Delta is how many shares you effectively own — and your probability of success. Extrinsic is the pot of gold we’re chasing. That’s it.
Everybody is engineered to take your money — so protect it first. The whole system is built to move money out of your pocket. Job #1 to grow capital is to keep it. The rule for ever handing your money to anyone: only do it if it does one of three things — (1) makes you more money, (2) saves you time, or (3) reduces your risk. Every trade we put on is meant to hit at least one of those.
Wealth is a behavior. Plenty of brilliant people are broke, and plenty of “ordinary” people with great money habits get rich. It runs mind → thoughts → habits → behavior → wealth. The seven habits we live by:
The 7 Habits of Wealth Builders
Systems beat willpower
Consistency beats brilliance
Simplicity beats complexity
Ownership of an asset beats income
Compounding beats prediction
Patience beats activity
Behavior beats intelligence
And the big one to close: trading is not wealth. “Trading is not wealth — most of the time it’s aggravation. Trading is just a mechanism that lets you acquire more productive assets faster.” The traditional road is earn → save → hand it to a fund → wait (Rule of 72: ~7.2% doubles your money every decade). The Grow Your Pile road is earn → save → buy assets → trade intelligently → use the profits to buy more assets → compound. Higher rate of return, faster freedom. (And yes — a bigger account makes the trading easier, not harder.)
The lines worth remembering
“The wealthy don’t make more decisions. They make fewer decisions — but they have better systems.”
“Simplicity makes people wealthy.”
“We don’t want to be right. We want to get rich.”
“The market pays you not for being right — it pays you for being well-positioned by being mechanical.”
“Trading is not wealth. It’s a mechanism that lets you acquire more productive assets faster.”
And, of course — “Build a system, be consistent, and — most importantly — you gotta risk it to get the biscuit, baby.” 🍪
🔒 Members: watch the full replay
