How to Trade Like a Business – Not a Gambler

Let’s be real—most traders are just hoping, guessing, and convincing themselves they have some magical edge.

They don’t.

The market is a game of probabilities, not instincts. And without a defined system, most traders are just gambling.

That’s where systems trading comes in.

A system is a repeatable trading setup—one where you control risk, identify when a trade is happening, and know it will happen over and over again. This isn’t about “being right” or calling tops and bottoms. It’s about executing a business plan where the market pays you for following rules.

Why Systems Trading is a Business

When you treat trading like a business, you eliminate the emotional rollercoaster. You know your objectives, your edge, and your risk. Every decision is based on data—not gut feelings.

Let’s talk about Post Earnings Announcement Drift (PEAD)—a systematic approach to trading earnings winners.

This strategy is pretty simple. When an earnings announcement for a given stock surprises the market and gaps aggressively higher, it means that there is a mismatch between data that was already available and this new information. 

The new information takes time to be analyzed and absorbed into the new models, and that is what creates the opportunity. 

This strategy has been studied back to the 1960’s and it consistently provides abnormal (better than normal) returns over a given period of time.

The PEAD strategy is a perfect example of how systematic trading works.

Identify the Edge – Stocks that beat earnings expectations tend to drift higher over the next several weeks. Decades of data prove it.

Define Entry & Exit Rules – Buy stocks that gapped up at least 3% on earnings, closed strong, and have above-average volume. Exit after 10-20 days or a predefined risk level.

Control Risk – A strict stop-loss ensures one trade never blows up your account.

Rinse & Repeat – This happens every single earnings season. No guessing. Just execution.

The Results: Decades of research show consistent outperformance—with PEAD trades delivering 2.6% to 9.37% per quarter (source).

This isn’t about taking a guess on how earnings will be. It’s a systematic approach backed by data, tested across decades, and something that you can take and test to see if you can make it work for you.

You know what the difference is between a gambler and a trader? 

The trader follows a system

Let me show you my system in action. 

I’ve talked a lot about how well the Crypto Momentum System has performed during this bull market, but as the saying goes, “it’s easy to make money in a bull market.”

In September and October, ahead of the US Presidential Election, the system started buying alt coins. Layer 1’s, Layer 2’s, AI Tokens, Gaming tokens, DeFi, Exchange Tokens and Memecoins. 

The election results caused a huge spike and bull run in all of Crypto. 

Great, that was the easy part.

Then at the height of the bull market in Mid December our system exited all positions and moved back into Bitcoin. 

I shared this with the folks in our private group yesterday. 

It isn’t just about getting into profitable trades. It’s about keeping the profits.

We caught all of the big run up, sold at the top,  and now we are watching from the sidelines while everyone in the Crypto markets gets murdered.

This bull market isn’t close to being done yet. There’s still plenty more trend to come.

You can get access to the Crypto Momentum System and be ready for the next bull run. 

Also, as a reminder, we will be closing access to The Thunderdome for new members on Sunday.

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Brandon Beylo

Value Investor

Brandon has been a professional investor focusing on value for over 13 years, spending his time in small to micro-cap companies, spin-offs, SPACs, and deep value liquidation situations. Over time, he’s developed a deeper understanding for what deep-value investing actually means, and refined his philosophy to include any business trading at a wild discount to what he thinks its worth in 3-5 years.

Brandon has a tenacious passion for investing, broad-based learning, and business. He previously worked for several leading investment firms before joining the team at Macro Ops. He lives by the famous Munger mantra of trying to get a little smarter each day.

AK

Investing & Personal Finance

AK is the founder of Macro Ops and the host of Fallible.

He started out in corporate economics for a Fortune 50 company before moving to a long/short equity investment firm.

With Macro Ops focused primarily on institutional clients, AK moved to servicing new investors just starting their journey. He takes the professional research and education produced at Macro Ops and breaks it down for beginners. The goal is to help clients find the best solution for their investing needs through effective education.

Tyler Kling

Volatility & Options Trader

Former trade desk manager at $100+ million family office where he oversaw multiple traders and helped develop cutting edge quantitative strategies in the derivatives market.

He worked as a consultant to the family office’s in-house fund of funds in the areas of portfolio manager evaluation and capital allocation.

Certified in Quantitative Finance from the Fitch Learning Center in London, England where he studied under famous quants such as Paul Wilmott.

Alex Barrow

Macro Trader

Founder and head macro trader at Macro Ops. Alex joined the US Marine Corps on his 18th birthday just one month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He subsequently spent a decade in the military. Serving in various capacities from scout sniper to interrogator and counterintelligence specialist. Following his military service, he worked as a contract intelligence professional for a number of US agencies (from the DIA to FBI) with a focus on counterintelligence and terrorist financing. He also spent time consulting for a tech company that specialized in building analytic software for finance and intelligence analysis.

After leaving the field of intelligence he went to work at a global macro hedge fund. He’s been professionally involved in markets since 2005, has consulted with a number of the leading names in the hedge fund space, and now manages his own family office while running Macro Ops. He’s published over 300 white papers on complex financial and macroeconomic topics, writes regularly about investment/market trends, and frequently speaks at conferences on trading and investing.

Macro Ops is a market research firm geared toward professional and experienced retail traders and investors. Macro Ops’ research has been featured in Forbes, Marketwatch, Business Insider, and Real Vision as well as a number of other leading publications.

You can find out more about Alex on his LinkedIn account here and also find him on Twitter where he frequently shares his market research.