Portrait of a Trader: Clockwork (Part III)

Continued from Part II.

TLRY: A Trade Breakdown

It’s September 19th 2018 on the MBC Securities trading desk. Clockwork has several stocks on his watchlist and they all share on common and familiar theme–they’re cannabis plays.

After years off the radar of day traders, the Pot Stocks have roared back, now trading alongside the big players on the NASDAQ. If the cannabis public sector was a small farming town in 2013, it’s now grown into an industrial town with smokestacks on the horizon. Legalization has now been finalized almost everywhere in the U.S. and Canada. After the landmark Constellation Brands $4 billion dollar investment in Canopy Growth Corp (CGC), it seems every pot stock is riding a wave of momentum. Leading the charge is Tilray (TLRY), the first major cannabis IPO on the NASDAQ, debuting at $17 in July.

As of the moment, TLRY trades over $200–representing greater than a 1000% gain from IPO in just 3 months.

This of course, attracts all the short sellers–they’re circling like vultures, cautioning investors that these sky-high valuations can’t be supported by the companies’ meager revenue and total lack of profitability. That the bubble is going to pop imminently and it won’t end well.

Clockwork knows fundamentals don’t matter—at least not immediately. The market’s recognition of misaligned prices is unpredictable. Being the first short seller to step in and cry bubble is not a viable trading plan. It’s often better wait for the first wave of short sellers to scream in pain. Better yet, wait for the last wave–for the day traders who try to pick the top of the parabolic move to give up as well.

By that afternoon, the MBC desk was a bloodbath of red PnL, overwhelmed by losses from shorting TLRY.

CJ: TLRY is currently the firm’s worst ticker right now. I suggest you stay out of it.

Yeah CJ has a point. He is the all-seeing floor manager who can see all the blood on this TLRY. Clockwork is currently down $60,000 on it. That’s at 60% of his daily stop limit, a threshold that he’s rarely ever at given his propensity to avoid drawdown as much as possible. He has a lot of other traders in his ear chit-chatting about the stock.

Pete (on chat): We shouldn’t short this TLRY anymore. It’s making highs past 2pm, that’s not a formula for a stock where you should short at that time period. Let it gap to $400 for the next day or something and short the open again.

Newb teammate: I’m too afraid of this stock, the spread is extremely wide and it trades too fast.

Pro teammate: yeah I give up on this thing. I’m stopped out for the day. Fired all my bullets in the morning and stopped over the opening highs.

At this point, while TLRY trades near $300, the entire floor has flattened their short positions and nobody is daring to take it on. Clockwork has told his team that he’s hands-off on the stock until the next day.

Then a downtick happens. It’s very fast. The stock trades lower $20 points. He furrows his brow. I think… that’s it?

He doesn’t think about his position size or his intended risk or where he’s going to stop out if he’s wrong. Those are all problems to think about later, if the trade is a loser and he has to explain to firm management why he blew up his account.

Clockwork triple taps his sell key without hesitation.

Just a few minutes ago he told everyone he’s done trading TLRY and now he’s clicked into 10,000 shares. About a minute later, the stock halts down.

Pro teammate: what the FUCK??? TILRAY INDICATING $240. DID ANYONE SHORT THAT?

Clockwork: I’m short ten from 280. I think it’s over. I’m not covering, I’m only adding.

There’s a bounce back to 260. A $400,000 gain has halved. Adrenaline takes a hold. There is no time to get rattled over the swings, now is time to be greedy and achieve the highest score on the desk. He’s tired of seeing other pro’s on the desk make 7-figure trades while he pikes around. This is the moment, right here and right now. It’s time to show everyone how it’s done. When you get dealt pocket aces and you can get all your chips in–you just do it, no questions asked.

I’m taking out all these 240 bids before someone else does.

Now he has 20,000 shares. Seconds later, the stock trades into another downside volatility halt at $222.

Newb teammate: I want to short so badly but I can’t even short 100 shares. It’s too crazy with all these halts. What’s your plan Stephen?

Clockwork: It’s gonna open under $200 and I’m going to cover and make a million bucks.

It’s Clockwork’s best trade ever up to that point. All his teammates and a few others outside his pod gather around him during post market review. Victor gives him a high five as he walks by. They all want to know, how’d he do it? How’d he figure out it was the top and grab all that size when everyone wanted to give up?

He shrugs. Sometimes you just know.

Clockwork: It was over. I could see it so I went full size. That’s really all trading is.

Everyone nodded as if they understood—but did they? It’s hard to put into words what timing is all about. You could say it’s parabolic, overvalued, or that short sellers have thrown in the towel—but those observations could have been made earlier too. It’s simply a moment shaped by a decade of trading experience and countless hours of screen time.

He follows up 2018 with another decent 7-figure year in 2019—totaling $1.65 million in profits. It’s not groundbreaking, but steady and more importantly, Clockwork’s life happiness reaches new highs. Money, once just numbers flickering around on a screen, now feels like it opens up real-life experiences to a whole new level. Nights are filled with parties, new connections, and a fresh spark of romance with a new girlfriend. Amid the celebrations, he takes a moment to give back to his family by surprising his mom with a brand-new condo. He commissions a custom-built doghouse for his loyal companion Milky—a miniature mansion complete with climate control, memory foam bedding, and a landscaped yard for endless play.

His dream has become reality.

At this point, he’s just playing for the highest scores—for the love of the game.

Portrait of a Trader in the Most Volatile Market Ever

2020 rolls in, and the market keeps climbing. The S&P 500 surges past 3000, hitting new highs, as if nothing in the world could stop it. There’s a jolt of fear when news breaks about missiles in Iran, but within days, the market shrugs it off. Then, whispers of a strange new flu in China spark unease, but again, we’re back on track almost instantly. Clockwork starts to feel invincible—like the market is untouchable. Nothing ever happens, he tells himself. It’s all just noise, fake news. Growing complacent, he begins funneling his steady monthly payouts from MBC into index funds, convinced the market will never fall again.

TSLA drops its first-ever impressive earnings, and by early Q1 2020, the stock rockets close to $1000. Clockwork misses the full ride on the long side—his bearish bias holding him back from capitalizing properly. But no matter. The rocket flew high enough for him to short near the peak, catching a clean 20% correction on the way down. He takes his slice and moves on, satisfied but never truly content.

Victor directs Clockwork to walk the team through his TSLA trade, so they can study his approach.

Clockwork (at another review session with all his teammates): Just wait for the top and then get short.

Trainee: how do you do that?

Clockwork: you’ll see it because of the way it is.

Then March rolls in, and something feels… off. The VIX starts creeping above 40, and SPY tumbles from its highs of 340 down to 300. There’s this lingering sense of unease in the air but Clockwork keeps throwing cash into index funds in his personal account, convinced these dips will eventually look like no-brainer buying opportunities–although his trader brain is starting to wonder if he’s catching a falling knife.

The day is Wednesday, March 11th—a date we all remember in our own way. Unsettling waves of headlines start to swirl around the mediasphere: Tom Hanks tests positive for COVID, cruise ships are stranded at sea, masks suddenly become a common sight on the subway, and the NBA suddenly suspsends the season indefinitely.

Out in Queens, Clockwork is hosting a house party. Friends are gathered around, playing drinking games and Mafia, when their phones start lighting up. One by one, they make excuses to leave. Glancing at the TV in the background, Clockwork catches the headline: “Trump Declares COVID-19 a National Emergency.” A friend shares viral videos from China—people coughing in the streets, being forcibly removed and barricaded by authorities.

Uh oh. The party’s over.

He now realizes the “China flu” from a month ago is not just real—it’s about to completely upend all of civilized society. With a sense of dread and urgency, he rushes to the local grocery store, stocking up on instant noodles and dog kibble. He then bunkers in his condo, bracing for the worst.

Before we know it, we’re deep in the chaos of a bear market—one that defies anything we’ve ever seen as professional traders.

The first time we saw SPY hit a downside volatility halt, it was pure shock and awe.

Clockwork: I guess we’re heading into the Great Depression now. GG long term portfolio.

Clockwork was now staring at red in his long-term portfolio. To make matters worse, his biggest investment was in a pre-IPO travel and lodging company—basically the worst place to park money during a pandemic bear market when global travel came to a screeching halt.¹They ended up having to do an emergency cash raise at a down round Adding to the weight, his parents constantly messaged him about their own portfolio losses, investments that he had recommended. It was gut-wrenching to watch a decade of hard work seemingly evaporate, even if only on paper.

He thought back to all those months grinding it out, starting as a trainee in 2011, carefully building a nest egg and putting it into index funds—the so-called ‘smart’ move. Now it all felt like a cruel joke. But there was no time to dwell on it. He had to block out the noise, stay sharp, and do what he does best: day trade stocks.

March 2020: A Month Breakdown

There was no single standout trade to point to and say, “Yeah, he hero-ticked the bottom!” Instead, it was a patchwork of trades spread over an entire month in a 90+ VIX environment. Sometimes he went long SPY calls, other times he shorted VXX or played high-beta stocks. Some bounces lasted minutes, others stretched into hours or days.

Then he had to trade closing imbalances. Typically a niche strategy focused on events like index rebalancing, it took on new significance in the 90-VIX market. WTG traders noticed even liquid mega caps indicating abnormal out-of-the-money prices in the last five minutes, sometimes as much as 3% off current market prices. Something unusual was happening.

Clockwork had spent years meticulously analyzing closing auction imbalances, turning raw data into a treasure trove of trading insights in a relentless pursuit to understand the ultimate trading alpha…

Yeah, that’s not really what happened. Clockwork simply saw all the top traders at WTG trade gung ho on closing imbalances, spamming their entire buying power on major high beta names into the bell. He knew this was one of their major profit centers that had always eluded him and he figured–why the fuck not? and went for it as well.

If you asked Clockwork about that month now, he wouldn’t recall much. It was pure “heat of battle” trading—reacting to the panic, buying with little clarity on risk, and managing positions as best as he could within his limits. Somehow, he pushed through, trading up to several million shares a day and carving out his slice of the chaos to the tune of $3.5 million.

At the end of the May, Clockwork had accumulated $8 million in YTD profits, already surpassing his prior career high in 2018.

The Bounce of Summer

The stock market began to recover after March. The U.S. government passed the $2 trillion CARES Act, while the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates, resumed quantitative easing, and provided emergency market support. Investor optimism returned as tech companies posted solid earnings and progress on COVID-19 vaccines offered hope for economies to re-open. Small-cap companies began identifying opportunities to position themselves as “COVID stocks,” whether in vaccines, diagnostics, alternative treatments, or PPE, aiming to capitalize on the surge of investor interest fueled by speculative trading.

There were now all these government programs in place designed to funnel money into companies that could potentially contribute positively to combating COVID-19. Some of them were active before 2020 but we didn’t really know they existed… until they came into the forefront via stock market headlines.

On July 28, 2020, under the Defense Production Act, Kodak, a once-proud American stalwart that had fallen on hard times due to technological obsolescence, received a $765 million loan to transition into producing pharmaceutical ingredients.

We all laughed.

Clockwork: My mom bought on a Kodak camera when we moved to America in the early 2000s. Now they want to cure covid. WTF?

Clockwork usually kept his opinions out of trading, but he couldn’t help but find it absurd. Victor had been urging him to articulate his trading plan clearly before parabolic setups unfolded, giving his mentees a chance to capitalize. KODK seemed like the perfect opportunity, so he told his team on the morning call²(everything is now on discord because it’s 100% work from home in 2020) that if the setup aligned, he’d short 100,000 shares and ride it down to $5. Explaining how to “short the top” on these parabolic moves had been a challenge, but this was his moment to demonstrate it live and teach by example.

KODK: A Trade Breakdown

On the day the loan was announced, KODK’s price peaked near $12 at the open before fading back to $8—a 200% daily gain, big but actually a littlemodest compared to the earlier wild runs of other COVID stocks. Clockwork managed to scalp some smaller gains but never pushed for a home run trade. He found himself a little disappointed he couldn’t back up his words with a big trade.

Damn I really wanted to show a nice gain for everyone.

Then, after hours, KODK sits quietly—until it doesn’t.

Suddenly, it spikes over the prior highs. Something’s happening.

President Trump at 5:30 EST: “Kodak will now become a key player in bringing pharmaceutical manufacturing back to the United States.”

The President simply reiterated the same news the next morning, offering no new information, yet because of that moment, KODK hit new highs, climbing to $13 after hours. That very moment made KODK a force to be reckon with for short sellers.

The following morning, it surged even higher pre-market, opening above $20 at the bell—chaos unleashed, with market orders flooding the book, ignoring all sense of price. Clockwork senses panic and reacts to the tape with a counter trend measure.

Clockwork: “I’m short!”

He dives in with a massive position—50,000 shares at $20. The stock pulls back briefly to $18, giving him a glimmer of hope, but within minutes, it reclaims the highs, forcing him to stop out. He covers for a brutal loss: -$120,000. His face flushes bright red.

This was supposed to be the perfect opportunity, the one he’d been hyping to his team—and he’d already blown it with a six-figure punt within minutes.

“I’m just early,” he mutters, trying to convince himself.

Clockwork zeros in on KODK’s ultra-fast tape, aiming to time his entries with precision and hit size on micro-ticks. At $27, he thinks he’s finally nailed it and slams 10,000 shares short. But the stock doesn’t budge—it doesn’t even hesitate. Instead, it surges past $30 in seconds.

I can’t cover into this rip, he tells himself, gripping the mouse tighter. Normally a trader of discipline, he abandons his usual playbook. The pain begins to take over. Rather than cut his losses, he pivots into hope—a dangerous shift.

He rationalizes the decision. With his yearly PnL, his daily loss limit has been extended to $500,000. I’ve got room to work with, he thinks, as if saying it out loud could make it true.

But deep down, he knows this isn’t over. This is going to get worse before it gets better, he mutters, as the mounting loss begins to loom larger than the trade itself.

I’m trading the stock alongside him, by the way. There’s a stretch of silence where he stops chatting with me… then ping, I hear it.

He’s been riding the entire wave of green candles and is down several hundred thousand dollars with no idea where to get out. The KODK short squeeze seems unstoppable, with traders relentlessly spamming the ask and forcing the stock higher.

Back on the desk, while KODK is halted for the 6th consecutive green candle and indicating higher at $46, Clockwork feels a tap on his shoulder. Time freezes. This is the moment every prop trader dreads—the boss man is coming and now they have to reckon with the nightmare they’ve created for themselves.

CJ: Just a heads up Stephen, you’re getting close to your loss limit. If KODK gets to $70, we’re going to shut you out and liquidate.

He squirms a bit at the thought of a max loss. It’s never happened to him before.

KODK re-opens above 45. He waits.

It climbs over $50 and triggers another halt.

KODK explodes to $60 but literally within the blink of an eye, it collapses to $53. That’s when it happens—the shift. The tape turns, and the offers flood in, stacking like a dam ready to break. There’s a 15 second window called “Continous Limit State” where a volatility halt will occur if price is unable to move away.³a more detailed explanation of stocks halts here: https://bullishbears.com/ludp-halt/ You have to act fast.

It’s time for Clockwork to tap into his ultimate skill again again.

He taps his mega key–a one tap button that spams 8 different routes to join the ask–and he gets filled another 30,000 shares. The 15 seconds of Continous Limit State end and the first downside halt slams down like a guillotine, freezing everyone in place.

Then I hear from him again.

He tries to act as if he had it all under control along but deep down, he knows he got away with some loose decision making on risk management.

I can’t believe I took it that far.

It re-opens at 30.

This was the beginning of the “big halt down” trade. It’s a simple formula–bunch of green candles for a 100%+ intraday move, then first red candle and halt down–you hammer it and wait for the -50% gap down.⁴It would last for a good year as an edge, then it slowly eroded after that with too many fake signals where the sellers would stuff the ask, only to let it loose for another new high

The Rest of 2020

The same rough formula continues for the rest of the year: trade COVID stocks, hit imbalance plays hard, and ride market volatility. The best prop traders don’t overcomplicate—they keep it simple and stick to their greatest hits on repeat.

Clockwork’s year ends with 4x as much profit as his previous career best. MBC Securities as a whole has their best year ever as well, netting over $50 million in profits.

In 2017, he received a black shirt and a nice tavern dinner with the rest of the firm to congratulate to him. At year’s end, Victor told Stephen that when the lockdowns ended, he’d get him an expensive steak dinner and a sapphire shirt–minting him in the rare 8-figure class territory among MBC traders.⁵our profit-split adjusted PnL was always neck and neck up until this point. but in 2020, Stephen completely blew past me and became the most successful trader from the summer 2011 MBC class

Portrait of a Trader in the Dumbest Market Ever

2021 rolls in, and if 2020 was the wildest ride we’d ever traded—a rollercoaster of crashes and rebounds—then 2021 was the theme park of absurdity. The market turned into a FOMO World where everyone with a Robinhood or WeBull account thought they had a fast pass to Wall Street. Meme stocks like GME and AMC were the main attractions, pulling in crowds like a rickety, too-good-to-be-true thrill ride. Discord pump groups like Atlas Trading rose and fell like a malfunctioning Ferris wheel, while TikTok introduced the “financial influencer” as the park’s over-the-top mascot—dancing around in a bright costume while suggesting the most ridiculous specualtive investments. Then there was the crypto bubble, making a grand return as the park’s haunted house—exciting, overhyped, and terrifyingly unstable—while NFTs strutted in as the overpriced gift shop souvenirs: shiny, useless, and inexplicably expensive. The whole 2021 market was one big carnival of bubbles.

Let’s breakdown some of the worlds that Clockwork would trade in.

First there was SPAC-tacular World. A Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) is a “blank check” company created with the sole purpose of raising capital through an initial public offering (IPO) to acquire or merge with an existing private company. While traditional IPOs involve a lengthy due diligence process led by underwriters, SPAC mergers are often less scrutinized. Financiers saw this as the next wave of easy money and started hatching deals left and right with private companies. The market went from 59 SPAC’s in 2019 to 248 SPAC’s in 2020 to a whopping 613 SPAC’s in 2021. Needless to say, many private companies with less than stellar financials started to trade on the market solely on hype and potential. It became the next bubble.

One shining example of the SPAC mania was NKLA—Nikola Corporation—an electric vehicle company that promised to ‘revolutionize’ the transportation industry with hydrogen fuel cell and electric trucks. Initially hailed as the next Tesla, Nikola rode a wave of hype to an insane valuation higher than Ford—all before producing a single vehicle. Everything unraveled when allegations of fraud surfaced, including staged promotional videos and inflated technology claims, leading to founder Trevor Milton’s resignation and eventual fraud charges.⁶They were most known for rolling a truck prototype down a hill for a promotional video to make it look like it was driving under its own power. The great Nate Andersen of Hindenburg Research exposed all of it. Guess who shorted the top?

Then there was this DWAC–Digital World Acquisition Corp–that announced a plan to take Truth Social in October 20, 2021. This is a company that at the time had zero revenue but people hyped it on the possibility Trump would permanently use it as his new platform after his ban from Twitter. Unsurprisingly, it became a cult favorite among conservative investors, who saw buying DWAC shares as the equivalent of casting a vote for Trump as president.

DWAC in October was another TLRY-esque morning for the MBC desk–tons of traders taking way too much drawdown shorting the way up and then Clockwork coming in for the clean up job after the exhaustion top. It’s his best trade all year.

Second, we move on to Meme-stonk Mountain. He didn’t do great on the two infamous ones–GME and AMC. Those were almost too volatile for their own good to process right away. He did better on the sympathy plays that didn’t quite make it superstardom status.

Koss Corporation (KOSS), a legacy headphone manufacturer in fundamental decline, became an unexpected meme stonk in January 2021. You had all these r/WSB posts about how it was the “next GME” simply because it had a high short interest. It surged from $3 to a peak of $127, a gain of 4000%. That’s MemeStonk Mountain for you–even the flimsiest bull thesis out there could make a stock travel much further than any rational mind could comprehend.

Third, there was Pandemic-Plains—the OG playground from spring 2020. These stocks still had plenty of juice but money started shifting toward the vaccine plays, which a lot of people saw as society’s ticket out of the pandemic.

In August 2021, the number one vaccine stock Moderna, MRNA, reached a high of $497.49 per share, up from around $100 at the start of the year—a gain of nearly 400% that would represent a market cap of $200 billion. Even though it had a much more “real” story than all the rest of the aforementioned stocks, it still traded too far and too fast and no stock is immune from gravity. It would decline by 50% before year’s end.

Fourth, there was the world of Pump-and-Dumpia—the realm of low-float penny plays and junk stocks. 2021 saw the meteoric rise of pump-and-dump groups on WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discord groups. People lost all shame and pumped whatever piece of shit they could. What were once-a-month opportunities in 2018 for the small cap short seller was now seemingly occuring on a daily basis.

Fifth, there was Crypto Country, which cycles between bull mania and bear winter every few years or so. After a relatively quiet 2020, crypto roared back to life in 2021, with Bitcoin hitting an all-time high of nearly $69,000 in November and Ethereum surging past $4,800. Alongside this revival came the emergence of NFT-topia, a vibrant sub-sector fueled by demand for a new asset class of digital collectibles.

Clockwork: Pete I don’t understand these NFT’s, how are people making money off a picture of a monkey or a rock?

Pete: it’s basically buying a receipt for a JPEG and hoping someone dumber pays more for it later.

Clockwork: huh.

By late 2021, it seemed as if half of FinTwit had an NFT avatar. It added to this general feeling that the markets had become one big giant joke⁷and the only way to stay sane was just to keep grinding and making money every single day . Clockwork avoided that nonsense because he didn’t want to get money stuck on any NFT exchanges. He stuck to trading conventional “old crypto” and it worked out just fine for him.

For two years now, it seemed as if everyone was making money left and right. It wasn’t just Clockwork’s PnL but the entire desk. Anyone could jump into the speculative playground du jour of FOMO World and ride the roller coaster of volatility. The only big question looming on everyone’s mind was… when would it end?

Here’s the thing about these frothy markets that only go up–they have a way of making even the most disciplined traders fall into bad habits. The desire for more creeps in, discipline fades, and habits get sloppy. Sometimes, you manage to get away with it by doubling down as trades move against you. You start to chase new strategies that others are deploying and making millions on, without a full understanding of the risk.

This “chase more money” sentiment culminated in an all-hands-on-deck meeting where the firm managers started to encourage traders to open up the playbook and go after the hottest trades.

Toward the end of the year, as the market kept climbing to new highs, there was a meeting where Victor spotlighted one of the desk’s rising stars. This guy had been trading with MBC for over seven years, but his big breakthrough only came in the last couple of years. Around the desk, he’d earned the nickname ‘SPAC-Wizard.’ Unlike the day traders who were happy scalping for small percentage gains, he was a research-driven trader who zeroed in on SPACs with asymmetric opportunities. He’d hold onto them for incredible 5-10x returns. Victor was so sold on his approach that he called a meeting to have SPAC Wizard break down down his process for the entire firm. He then encouraged everyone to follow into the same strategy.

During the meeting, other traders chimed in, suggesting they shouldn’t just pile into SPACs but also increase their aggression into other high-flying sectors—COVID recovery plays, SaaS stocks, and mega-cap tech leaders. It became a rallying cry to squeeze every bit of momentum out of the market before the music stopped and the game was over.

Clockwork started thinking about what it would take to become the kind of trader who could pull in $20 million—or even $50 million someday. To hit those numbers, he figured he’d have to run his book more like a hedge fund portfolio manager than an old-school day trader. In his mind, this was the path to leveling up and scaling his PnL.

Clockwork Capital Management. It has a good ring to it. I’m going to start buying dips on all these names. I’m going to run a book of 20-30 names.

He wraps up 2021 with his second straight year of pulling in an eight-figure PnL. But honestly? He doesn’t even feel like he crushed it. If his 2014 self had seen these numbers, he’d be over the moon. But in 2021, he’s surrounded by traders on the desk hitting record highs, and even his non-trader buddies are bragging about 500% gains on random stocks they found in WhatsApp groups. It just doesn’t hit the same anymore. He wants to go harder next year.

Early January 2022, Clockwork invites me to his housewarming party in New Jersey. The place is stunning—a multi-story loft right on the Hudson River. The party’s basically all MBC cogs, and there’s this ambitious and greedy vibe while traders talk shop. I congratulate him on his successful run and I ask him: What’s Next?

I talk to everyone else and they’re just as hyped, chirping about how much more money they’re going to rake in this year. The consensus? The market’s got another 10-20% left to climb, but not before a dip—and that dip’s just going to be another golden buying opportunity.

Portrait of a Trader in the Market that Suddenly Became Difficult

Let’s be real: short-term traders aren’t exactly known for their big-picture predictions—and they don’t need to be. Their edge comes from reacting to what’s working in the moment, not betting the farm on some boldly declared opinion. But for Clockwork, things started to shift. Maybe it was the confidence from his past wins or the hype from those top-down MBC meetings, but he drifted hard from his usual strategy. Instead of being Mr. Flexible—the guy who swooped in last and capitalized on capitulation like he did with TLRY and DWAC—he got locked into bigger, long-term positions he had accumulated over time.

By Q1 2022, it was clear: this new approach wasn’t clicking. There was certainly a dip but no sustained bounce back to the highs.

For one, the market finally turned after a year and a half of nonstop gains driven by pandemic stock hype, tech growth, and low interest rates. When the broad market takes a hit, it’s a chain reaction—everyone feels the pain.⁸(I know what you’re thinking, why not adapt and run a short book? all those shitty pandemic stocks like MRNA, PTON, ZM and overcooked fintech plays like SQ, PYPL, and SHOP–they all lasted so much longer than anyone anticipated, constantly rallying from 20-30% dips. It was too hard to flip the switch and be a longer-term bear)

Clockwork’s new SPAC portfolio wasn’t spared. Nobody wanted to buy this trash anymore and he’s left holding the bag.

By the end of May, it hit Clockwork— the 2020-2021 bull market was done for. FOMO World was officially closed and the easy money was now gone.

Clockwork has to face the music and cut his losses. Beyond that, he also has to scale back his ambitions. A goal to make new PnL highs just wasn’t feasible in this time of transition. It was time to go back to small ball and grind. We can talk about his speed or his pattern recognition or his ability to size into his best plays… but in the end, it’s humility that might be his best trait. He’s not going to give back those hard-earned gains.

Times were rough on the desk. There was a twinge that felt like the old days—pre-WTG, 2011-2013 negative vibes. Low morale everywhere, young traders dropping like flies. WTG/MBC had been way too loose, letting even the greenest guys buy dips and hold losers with size. But now? Game’s changed. Belt-tightening time had come.

Bad days would happen…

…and then discipline would be handed down. Traders that were too deep in the hole would be forced to scale down or leave entirely.

New Times, New Strategies

Adapt or die.

Victor called another meeting in the summer of 2022, laying it out straight: BTFD, permabull plays, and spamming SPACs with maximum buying power were officially dead. SPAC-Wizard had already moved on to greener pastures, cashing in all he could from the prop desk before the strategy ran dry. The strategies weren’t working anymore, and the losses were piling up. The only trader still putting up numbers close to 2021 levels was a trader out in Austin, Texas that most of the MBC desk hadn’t even met—The Condor King.⁹(he actually told WTG to not have his name show up on the leaderboard but only show up as Condor Account). He was only seen on the daily leaderboard every day as the rest of the firm struggled. Instead of aiming for large directional trends, he’d shifted gears completely, focusing on options selling. His game? Being the guy who sold overpriced lottery tickets to the aggressive traders still chasing the kind of monster moves they hit in 2021.

Inspired by this successful maverick trader, Victor thought he could inspire the MBC branch with this new strategy for this new market regime.

Victor: We’re short-term traders—we adapt. The game’s changed, and it’s time we step into the world of exotic hedging.

Are you starting to see a pattern? Every time Victor has a meeting suggesting the desk do something¹⁰(2018–telling everyone to stop shorting GBTC and it’s the top. 2021–telling everyone to do deep research and get aggressive buying SPAC’s and it’s the top of the market), it ends up being a watershed moment where doing the complete opposite would have been the better choice.

It’s nice and dandy to sell naked options in a declining market where nobody wants to trade anymore. But all it takes to end it all is just one moment of vulnerability.

Just when we thought meme stocks were forever dead, a dying retailer called Bed, Bath, and Beyond–BBBY–starts ripping away in August. Early on, it shoots up from $5 to $10, and the Condor King, confident as ever, shorted a massive amount of out-of-the-money options. But then came the gamma squeeze, pushing the stock to $30 in just a week and turning his options book into a sea of red. Turns out his so-called ‘exotic hedging’ was just straight-up naked call selling with zero actual hedging.

That day, the Condor King blew up a ridiculous seven figures on naked positions, leaving the firm scrambling to cover margin calls.¹¹They let Condor King go after this but not before he pulled in months of big paychecks from his strategyClockwork took a six-figure hit himself, piling onto an already brutal year of shrinking gains. After that fateful day, WTG would impose much stricter risk limits on naked options selling. It closed the book on any possibility that ‘exotic hedging’ would be the magic bullet to restore MBC’s PnL back to the glory days.

Clockwork spends the rest of the year deploying his old school scalping strategies, with the occasional mean reversion top-tick sprinkled here and there. His gains are now just a fraction of what they once were just twelve months ago. He accepts that the market giveth and the market taketh away. He has weekly meetings with his trading pod and he reiterates that it’s time to get back to the grind. The message? Focus on consistency and survival at all costs.

Clockwork: This isn’t the time to push anymore. 2020-2021 was a godsend market and it doesn’t last forever. It doesn’t make sense to try to achieve new PnL highs when that market ends.

He finishes 2022 just under $800,000 in profits and it ends a run of five consecutive years finishing over seven figures. 2023 is a little better but still a far cry from the glory days.

The End

Looking back, the last two years were a letdown compared to the wild pandemic bull market.¹²(yes I know I’m missing 2024, I’m not going to write about this, this was supposed to be finished in Q2 of 2023 at the latest) But if you ask Clockwork, he’s not stressed about it. Sure, 2022-2023 was mentally tough with shrinking profits, but it’s nothing compared to the uncertainty of 2011-2014, when he was still struggling to find consistent proftability, let alone build a solid nest egg. During those times, it felt like one misstep or one dry spell could end his trading career. Now? He feels like he’s made it. He takes the ups and downs of his PnL in stride, handling the volatility with a sense of zen and gratitude.

I’ve paid my dues. It doesn’t always have to be a monster year. I take what the market gives me.

We all have our goals. Some people dream of buying a Rolex. Others want a private jet. Then there are the big players—the Stevie Cohens and David Teppers of the world—who aim to own sports teams and manage tens of billions. Clockwork aims for a far simpler life. An easy job, a laid-back life, taking care of his family, friends, and his dog. He’s paid his dues and now he can coast.

Has his career peaked with that crazy pandemic market? Maybe. Maybe not.

He’s ready for the next big thing. He doesn’t know exactly how it’ll unfold, but he’ll know it when he sees it.¹³Thanks for reading, this is the end of the Clockwork series.