The Beginning
In 2016, I graduated from UW Bothell with a BS in Electrical Engineering. Landed a job at Boeing. Good salary, great benefits, stable career. By all measures, I was "making it."
But I was miserable.
Not because Boeing was bad — it is a great company. But sitting in a cubicle optimizing systems for someone else's vision felt like a slow death. I wanted to build something of my own.
The Worst Decision (That Turned Out Right)
In 2020, I quit Boeing to become a full-time trader.
This was, objectively, a terrible decision. I had no edge, no strategy, and no idea how hard trading actually is. I was riding the pandemic trading wave — Robinhood, meme stocks, the whole circus.
I lost money. Significant money. Multiple blown accounts.
The Turning Point
After about a year of manual trading disasters, I had a realization: the problem was not the market — it was me.
Every loss was amplified by emotion. Every win led to overconfidence. I was fighting my own psychology every single day, and I was losing.
So I did what any engineer would do: I removed the human from the equation.
Building the First Algorithm
I started learning PineScript on TradingView. My engineering background gave me an edge here — I understood systems thinking, testing methodology, and the importance of robust design.
My first 10 algorithms were garbage. My next 10 were slightly less garbage. But by algorithm number 25, something clicked. A simple momentum strategy on ES futures that had:
- Clean entry logic based on price action
- Dynamic position sizing
- Strict drawdown limits
- Multi-timeframe confirmation
It was not fancy. It was robust.
From Personal to Public
I started sharing my results in a small Discord server with friends. Word spread. People wanted access. GFREQ was born — not from a business plan, but from genuine demand.
Today we have 420+ active subscribers, a live $60K account, and algorithms that have generated $47K+ in 12 months.
The Lesson
The path was not "engineer to trader to success." It was "engineer to terrible trader to humbled to applied engineering to trading to success."
Every failure taught me something. Every blown account was a data point. The engineering mindset — test, measure, iterate — is what ultimately made the difference.