Smooth Trader

Two years ago, I watched Rips on TopstepTV and looked up to him. I had been trading for about a year. I had made my first $100,000 with Topstep, earned an invitation onto TopstepTV, and was beginning to believe I might actually belong in this industry. Of everyone on that network, Rips was the trader I respected. Today, he called me a legend. He told his audience to follow me and said: “I don’t follow a lot of people. I follow him.” That moment hit harder than he probably realizes. Because he knows the headline: $2.2 million across 13 accounts in 16 trading days. He did not know everything behind it. At the time, I was going through an awful divorce. My mother had died. My father was suffering from severe depression. He could barely get out of bed or eat. I had full custody of my four-year-old son and was raising him alone while his mother slowly faded from his life. I was simultaneously taking care of my 77-year-old father that recently passed, God rest his soul, and trying to accomplish things that to most seemed impossible. I was grieving the loss of my marriage, my mother, and, in many ways, my father, while carrying the complete responsibility of raising another human being alone, being both mother and father to him. Still, I gathered whatever strength I had left for one final run. The run that was going to change the rest of my life. I had made a discovery in Order Flow. I believed I had reverse-engineered the mechanics behind one of the most widely used concepts in trading: the fair value gap. Instead of treating it as a zone, I reduced it to one precise price. I tested it. I passed 13 accounts. Then I traded green for 16 consecutive days and produced $2.2 million in account profits. I wasn’t trying to participate. I was trying to become number one, build a name, and change my son’s life. What came next felt like psychological warfare. The first payout denial cited risk management. I took a $500,000 haircut and kept going. Two more weeks. Come back for double. Another payout request. Another denial. Another quarter-million to half-million-dollar haircut. Come back for double. The cycle repeated while I worked my way through seemingly every denial in the Rolodex. For months, I stared at numbers that could have changed our lives while being unable to access them. I had put everything into that run. There were nights when I wondered whether my son would be better off without me and whether my life was worth living. I came frighteningly close to giving up on life, not just trading. Then I watched a blatant confession about using these same mechanics to see whether traders would break, as though it were simply part of the playbook. I cannot describe what hearing that did to me. There were trading days when I said to myself: “Fuck it. Let’s blow the accounts.” I remember literally slapping the shit out of myself. Slapping that thought out of my head and forcing myself to keep fighting. So I kept fighting. I contacted every major trader and affiliate I could find. Almost nobody responded. @kellyanntrades was the only person who cared enough to point me in the right direction. I will be forever grateful to her and the work she has done for this community. She didn’t just help me. Without knowing it, she helped save my life. I survived the divorce. I survived the grief. I survived being broke and bleeding tens of thousands of dollars to divorce attorneys every month while staring at millions I couldn’t touch. I survived my own mind. And two years later, one of the traders I looked up to told thousands of people that I was a legend. I’m not writing this because I think I’m one. I’m writing it for the person who put everything into one final run and is beginning to believe it was all for nothing. It may not be over. Do not let one company, one denial, one failure, or one season of your life convince you that you are finished. Keep going. Sometimes the person you look up to eventually looks across the room and recognizes you. Thank you, Rips. This one meant more than the payout itself. And to the struggling trader who may not have thousands of dollars to invest in education: In my humble opinion, Rips has earned his place at the top. He can provide more value in 15 minutes of streaming than many people deliver in an entire paid course. The fact that he gives it away for free is almost absurd. Real recognizes real. #LevelsToThis