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Tydal
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United States
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@sotok
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June 2017
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Part-Time Trader
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January 28, 2026
Tydal's TCG Triumph
I got into trading because the markets were something that always fascinated me. And with trading I particularly liked the account compounding and scalability aspect of it.
In 2017, I had just graduated and started my first full-time job in tech. Around the same time, I remembered I still had some Bitcoin I’d bought years earlier. It was worth about $4,000. I matched it with money from my paycheck and decided to actually learn how trading worked. I told myself that if I lost half of it, I’d walk away.
I also got lucky. That market ran hard, and despite not knowing what I was doing, I made money. That luck probably kept me around long enough to take trading seriously.
I joined The Chart Guys in September 2017, and that’s where the real learning started. After crypto topped, I transitioned into stocks and futures. That’s when progress slowed. For a long stretch, my account went nowhere. I wasn’t blowing up, but I wasn’t making meaningful progress either. Just grinding, stuck in a range, questioning if I was actually improving.
There were years where I made around $30,000, followed by years where I gave most of it back. In 2022, I learned one of my hardest lessons. I was holding long-term positions while day trading around them, thinking I was being smart. When tech rolled over, those swings overwhelmed everything. I’d have solid trading days and still watch my account decline. Eventually, I cut all the long positions and accepted that the approach wasn’t working.
My win rate is around 37%. On paper, that sounds like a losing trader. In reality, I take multiple small attempts at the same idea, cut losers quickly, and let winners do the heavy lifting. I use stops on every trade. One good trade can pay for a lot of small losses.
I’ve never relied on trading to pay my bills. I’ve kept my full-time job in tech this entire time. My expenses are covered by my primary income, and I still contribute to my retirement accounts like trading doesn’t exist. That separation gave me the psychological runway to stay in the game long enough to learn properly. I don’t call myself a full-time trader, and I’m comfortable with that.
Over the years, everything has been documented through KINFO (Verified Trading Journal Platform), trade by trade. There was no single breakout moment. It was slow, sometimes frustrating progress. But over time, those gains compounded. After many years of trading, that documented performance crossed over seven figures in cumulative profits.
The real shift came from understanding risk, not chasing setups. I started grading trades. Not everything deserves the same size. An A setup isn’t just a pattern, it’s context, trend, volume, sentiment, and confluence. When it’s there, I know it. When things stop working, I size down fast.
The community mattered too. I trade with a small group of people I trust, and we talk every morning. Earlier on, I spent hundreds of hours mentoring newer traders for free. Teaching forced me to explain my process clearly, and that made me better.
Even now, I stay cautious. Drawdowns are part of the process. I don’t chase. My goal isn’t to win every trade, it’s to protect what I’ve built and still be doing this years from now.
If there’s one takeaway, it’s this: don’t rush it. Give yourself runway. Focus on process, not profits.
The money came later.