Tito Adhikary

Tito traces his origin to growing up in India, glancing at the Sensex number in the newspaper every morning without knowing what it meant. After a chemistry bachelor's and master's following his father's footsteps, he got into Harvard's cancer biology PhD program, moving to the US in 2015. For years he tracked a mock portfolio of Apple, Amazon, Nvidia in a Google Sheet and watched it grow without acting. The COVID crash in March 2020 finally pushed him in — he deployed most of his US savings in blue-chip stocks over two weeks at the bottom.

"I have never felt so stupid and so dumb as in the market. It teaches you so much about yourself and all your liabilities."

By early 2021, Tito's COVID stocks had multiplied 2.5x. Riding momentum, he moved into growth names and longer-dated call options just as ARKK topped in February. He gave back a large chunk of his gains and learned that what felt like skill was mostly luck in a forgiving tape. The experience introduced him to options more seriously and raised questions about capital structure — how much to risk in trading versus investing accounts — setting up a much harder lesson in 2022.

"I didn't realize at the time how lucky I was. Yes, I sort of without any skill timed the bottom — but 2020 was just so forgiving."

Tito's early learning drew from Chat with Traders, TraderLion episodes, John Carter's Mastering the Trade (where he first encountered the squeeze/VCP concept), and Market Wizards. Ed Cota's quote — 'there are bold traders and there are old traders, but there are no bold old traders' — became a guiding principle for longevity. Market Wizards was his bible: inspiring because every trader's edge was so different, and because the psychology chapters applied directly to what he was going through.

"There are bold traders and there are old traders, but there are no bold old traders. That's pretty much etched into my brain."

Tito maps the PhD process directly onto trading: a hypothesis is a setup thesis, the experiment is the trade, results accumulate into a database, then you tweak variables. A PhD runs for years with little external validation — exactly like early trading, where progress is self-directed and feedback is slow. He never expected to master it in one or two years; Minervini took six. The market does not care about credentials. That realistic baseline protected his psychology during the inevitable hard stretches.

"I looked at it the same way as a PhD: hypothesis, experiment, result, database, tweak the variables. That framework prepared me fairly well."

Tito's most painful day: December 3rd 2021. Heading into it profitable for the year, he started down $4-5K and let it snowball through revenge trading into a $33,000 loss — essentially his full annual grad-student stipend. He was at dinner with his then-girlfriend that night, unable to be present; she did not learn the actual amount until 2025. His trigger turned out to be Thinkorswim's active-trader price ladder, which pulled him back in after every loss. Switching to a phone-based broker and keeping his main account as a cash account eliminated the problem.

"I lost about $33,000 in that single day. At the time I was a graduate student — my stipend was around 40 grand for the year."

Starting 2022 with $15K, Tito ran it to nearly $90K by September — surviving one of the worst bear markets by finding sectors that worked even as the index fell. Then on an FOMC day he entered Tesla calls at a key 314 resistance level, the market reversed hard, and he averaged down into a bigger loss. Back-to-back losing days erased his August gains. He spent most of 2023 trading a $5K account. The insight that emerged: your mental equity curve matters as much as your dollar curve — restore confidence first, then scale back up.

"There's your equity curve — and then there's your mental equity curve. You have to get back to your mental state before you can risk the same amount of capital."

Tito's framework has three layers. Right stock: relative strength versus the index, tight technical setups (bull flags, pennants, wedges), volume confirmation on breakouts, drying volume during bases, and multiple timeframe alignment. Right sector: identify leading themes and find multiple leaders in the same group. Right market: even the best setups fail at a higher rate when the indices are under their short-term moving averages. He cites Oliver Kell's price-cycle work as a significant influence on how he thinks about basin-breaks and wedge-pops.

"The three pillars: right stock, right sector, right market. Even the best setups tend to fail a lot more when the market is not supportive."

Tito selects strikes slightly out of the money but realistically reachable by expiration, informed by a stock's average weekly range. Implied volatility determines the strategy: low IV favors naked long options with progressive scaling out at 25, 50%. High IV favors debit spreads — long a strike, short a higher one — which reduces net cost and theta decay while maintaining a clear max risk. Very high IV or rangebound markets favor credit spreads where time decay works for you. For multi-week or multi-month setups he buys LEAPs; new leveraged single-stock ETFs give additional flexibility.

"IV dictates which strategy I use. Low IV — naked long options. High IV — debit spreads. Rangebound — credit spreads. Options let you adapt in ways stocks can't."

Tito ties risk to a dollar amount that is a percentage of his running net lick — not a percentage loss on the option. In a breakaway market on an A+ setup he might risk 5% of net lick; in a volatile choppy market he sizes so that 100% option loss equals his preset dollar. He has daily (flat if down $20K), weekly (cut size if down 10%), and monthly (reduce aggressively if down 5-10% from peak) circuit breakers. His main account is a cash account deliberately — when he overtrades, buying power runs out and forces him out. He wired out $957K in 2025.

"I don't look at option loss as a percentage. I tie it to a dollar amount — a percentage of my net lick. That's the universal governing piece."

Tito's 2025 USIC stats: started at $48K, made just over $1 million (2,115%), 52% win rate, profit factor of approximately 2, 80% green days. January was his best month percentage-wise; September was the worst (win rate dropped to low 40s on both long and short side). He credits the competition with filtering out boredom and low-conviction trades — knowing his stats are tracked publicly made him more selective. His competitive background in Indian academic exams made the pressure familiar rather than paralyzing.

"Entering the competition for me was like: here's a skill I've worked on for five years — can I prove to myself that it's worth something? Obviously had a great year."

Tito's stats show Mondays and Fridays outperform. Mondays often catch IV before it prices in a breakout, adding extra juice on top of the directional move. Fridays bring zero-dated options, where cheap premium near a stock's statistical weekly range limit creates asymmetric payoffs for someone who knows the name. His top tickers were Tesla, Apple, and ARM. Hold-time data was revealing: most profits came from holds over four hours — because losses are cut very quickly, short holds skew to losers.

"On Mondays, if a breakout starts early, IV hasn't caught up to the fact it's going to break. You get paid for the move — plus there's extra juice added on top."

Tito grew his account through Q2 2025, then systematically wired out profits from May/June onward — partly to protect gains, partly because he was buying his first home. His September drawdown was 8% from his year-to-date net lick — not from his account balance, which was actively being reduced by wires. He tracks P&L against running net lick specifically because account-level math is misleading when you withdraw regularly. Tesla was both his biggest winner and biggest loss of the year, on the same setup.

"I wire out money — so my net lick changes over time. I look at how much I'm up for the year, not just the account balance."

Tito walks through a Tesla setup from April 2025: a clean horizontal support level that generated a fake breakout (shakeout) which knocked him out, then a re-entry as price reclaimed the level. His options went 8-10x on the subsequent move. He covers the challenge of holding through volatility with options — progressive scaling at 25/50% rather than exiting all at once. The core lesson: horizontal price levels are his highest-conviction setups because they are universally visible, unlike trendlines where every trader draws a different angle.

"I love when it's simple on a horizontal price level. Not a trendline — everybody may not see the same trendline. Horizontal is universal."

Tito describes his Apple earnings trade: he held options while the stock 'surfed' above its 10 and 20-day moving averages in the weeks heading into the report. Apple beat and guided up after hours. He had held options overnight that initially opened down 70-80% as the gap was digested, then watched the IV explosion add fuel as the market makers repriced. The segment covers when to hold into earnings versus when to sell before the event, and how to calibrate overnight risk with options.

"Coming into earnings, this is what Kristjan Qullamaggie calls surfing on the SMAs — you're just riding a trend that's still intact all the way to the catalyst."

Tito covers two additional multi-week trades: CORE, which he held along the 10-day SMA as a sector swing, and RLB, where he bought August $40 calls on a pullback expecting a move to the mid-40s. He also discusses journaling in a private Discord channel as an accountability mechanism — writing the thesis publicly before a trade helps him commit to a plan, prevents impulse decisions, and creates a searchable review record for his weekly post-mortems.

"I write out my trade ideas in a Discord channel just for myself. It forces me to articulate the thesis before I trade it."

Tito explains a key phenomenon: option premium can diverge significantly from the underlying stock's price move, particularly in choppy or rangebound markets. He conducts a year-end review specifically at the options level — mapping back which strategy would have been most efficient for each setup. Credit spreads can generate returns even on flat price when IV collapses. Understanding when premium and price decouple is what separates an options trader who adapts from one who just picks direction.

"More traders started appreciating that the option premium just exploded — and that's something you learn over time: how to see when the setup favors the option strategy."

Tito's XLE trade illustrates his credit spread approach. XLE had ranged between 100 and 120 for four years. Using an RSI-under-40 filter to time entries near support, he bought January 2027 $50 calls for $3. XLE broke out and hit roughly $58 within a month, making the calls worth a large multiple. He contrasts what a zero-dated option would have returned — a massive discrepancy that shows why studying option pricing across expirations, not just the underlying, is essential.

"XLE had been ranging 100 to 120 for four years. January 2027 $50 calls were three bucks. XLE hit 58. The option math — that's where the real edge shows up."

February 19th 2025 was Tito's single biggest loss day of the year. He had been watching Nvidia and entered on what looked like a solid setup, but the timing was off — the position moved against him and he added once before cutting everything by end of day. He sized down in the days after, rebuilding from a smaller base. Unlike 2021 and 2022, this loss did not spiral: he cut it flat the same session, did not revenge-trade, and recovered the loss relatively quickly on the same ticker within weeks.

"That day was the biggest loss for the year. But mentally it was surprisingly okay versus 2021 and 2022 — I just cut it, sized down, and moved on."

After the Nvidia loss, Tito re-entered on a support-resistance flip and recovered the loss relatively quickly. He discusses SPX index options as a vehicle — richer premium but large payoffs when you catch a directional move. By late 2025 he began shifting toward credit spreads and mean-reversion strategies in choppy conditions, rather than forcing breakout trades into resistant markets. The insight: matching the option strategy to the market regime matters as much as picking the right stock.

"You can either trade the way you always do, or when it's choppy you go to credit spreads. You want to be adaptive — not just force breakouts into every environment."

Tito describes his structured review system. He tracks a 'recovery score' — how quickly he bounces back from a losing day in terms of trade quality, not just P&L — and has found it correlates with performance in the following days. He uses a daily checklist (he shares an actual screenshot) covering market conditions, thesis articulation, and position management. His weekly review covers both his biggest losses and the trades he missed entirely. Missed trades are as important to study as trades taken.

"I look at my biggest losses and why. Sometimes it's really not your fault — and sometimes it is. And then: trades I totally should have taken — how can I prevent missing them?"

Tito's parting advice: always know your max loss and make sure it's a number you can survive without disrupting your life. He catches himself whenever he notices he wants to be right more than profitable — that feeling is the signal to step back. For early traders, strategy hopping is natural but expensive; find people slightly ahead of you in the same approach and learn from them. Think in years, not weeks: compounding over time makes whatever P&L stress you're experiencing this week look trivial in hindsight.

"I caught myself doing that in 2022 — I felt like I wanted to be right more than I wanted to be profitable. And that was a big inflection point."