The story of the Challenge begins back in 2010 when Jeff Yaede, founder/creator of TraderMinute, was involved in managing funds for clients. He was involved in an investment fund primarily focused on stocks with the occasional use of options for speculation and hedging. One morning, he received a call from a client. The client had emailed me a document and wanted to discuss it. In this document, he showed a breakdown of the option performances and posed the question…

“Could you start with $5,000 and turn it into $100,000?”

Jeff chuckled at the notion and simply said that the data suggests it is possible with a bit of luck and good timing. Of course, he did not take it seriously as the amount of money they were talking about was pretty small compared to the size and scope of the fund. That said, Jeff told him "Sure, we will see what we can do."

“He did it…..twice!”

Over the course of the next 4 months, Jeff managed to turn the 5K starting value into 100K. Over the following year, he tried the endeavor 4 more times, going to zero twice while going to 19K and 100K on subsequent tries.

As life evolved, Jeff stepped away from fund managing to be a stay-at-home dad and trade on his own, thinking nothing of the option challenge and its future implications.

Jeff and his former client became friends, and he called Jeff one day asking about what he was trading. The former client went on to angle at Jeff showing his trades in real time. Of course, this is something Jeff was not willing to do as that brings all the stress of others making decisions based on his trades.

“… seen too many people follow other traders and not manage risk appropriately only to fail hard when a small losing streak inevitably happened.”

His friend brought up the Challenge idea that they had executed in the fund and posed the question about just showing that style of trading in real-time. Jeff was intrigued. Soon after, they spun up a simple blog to gauge the feasibility and interest in the idea. The blog, though not operational, can still be seen today.

The blog caught some interest and Jeff was fortunate enough to have a brother with the technical acumen to spin up a website with live streaming, chat, and trade alerts functionality.

Each Challenge with $3,000 and took it as high as they could over the next 3-4 months before starting back at the original $3,000.

The site grew with great customers that believed in what we were doing and could see the results.

Like anything in the trading world, TraderMinute needed to evolve. Market conditions were changing and old strategies needed to be replaced with new ones in order to keep up.

We searched for other traders to lead Challenges and found someone…or something. We named it KT. KT is an algorithm designed to pick Challenge trades and manage them through completion.

"KT kicked off trading and had immediate success."

The Challenge algorithm had the advantage of only making trades at 2 times of the day, freeing up our customer base to live their lives rather than wait for when Jeff was going to make the next trade. KT was also able to establish stop and profit-taking parameters as soon as a new trade was made. These were great additions to the Challenge and enhanced the ability of others to follow along with the trades.

The next stage is starting now. People change, markets change, and upgrades are needed. Though we are averaging a double of our money every challenge, we are going after MORE!

What’s new in Phase 4:

We are SUPER STOKED about Stage 4 and can hardly wait to see where it takes us.

Are you in?