Who's behind Theta Desk

I write here as JL — initials only. Not to hide anything shady — it just keeps this site separate from my day job, where the connection would only be messy. Everything else about me, I'll tell you straight.

I'm 38. By trade I'm an attorney, and I run my own firm. I have no finance degree, no CFA, no Wall Street pedigree. My financial education started on YouTube, moved to Twitter, and ended up in the stack of books that actually built the field. I am not a financial adviser, and nothing here is financial advice.

I came to this late, because of where I started

I grew up in a family where the mattress felt safer than the bank, and a brokerage account was treated like a trip to Vegas — your life savings on lucky number 7, red. (Which is, for the record, my lucky number.) Building wealth meant exactly one thing: save up, buy a building, rent it out, collect the income. So that was the only plan I ever considered.

In my thirties I learned three things about that plan. Renting residential property in New York is miserable — good luck to everyone who does it. Even in a good year, the returns trail the market over any 10-, 20-, or 30-year stretch. And it is far more work. So why was I so set on it?

I started looking around, and through a close friend I realized most of my peers from similar backgrounds had long-standing brokerage accounts, professionally managed. So I split my money 80/20 — 80% to a professional manager so it stayed protected, 20% to myself so I could learn by doing. Part control freak, part gambling itch. Worth saying clearly: this was money I could afford to invest, not my life savings.

I got lucky, and I'd rather say so

I had it good, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Two parents who started with almost nothing and gave me everything — a paid-off home and a family business that still runs alongside my firm. I miss them dearly. If you're not there yet, that is completely fine; there are many roads to it — hard work, a little luck, and above all discipline in how you spend. But I won't pretend I built this from zero.

The manager was — and is — excellent. When others were earning 3, 5, 6 percent, he earned me 20 (bull market, rising economy, all the caveats apply). He also charged a fee. Then I looked at my own little 20% sleeve and realized I wasn't half bad at this. That first year I out-earned him almost two to one and closed up 56%.

Let me be clear: that was not skill. It was ignorance and reckless risk-taking that happened to work. I did things that year that would give me heart palpitations today. The next year proved the point — I gave it all back and then some, because surprisingly-high risk means exactly that, high risk — before clawing back to about +20% by December. Since then I've put up double-digit returns every year, most of them well into the teens, through one of the most bullish expansions in the history of the U.S. indices. A lot of that was luck. Some of it, maybe, was moxie. (Does anyone still say moxie?)

What I actually do — and why it isn't here

I'm happy with my system, but it is not a beginner's system, and it is not what this site teaches. I trade on margin, write naked puts, run a tech- and growth-heavy book with defensive ballast in financials and other defensive sectors, hedge aggressively against tail events, and keep large cash positions. None of that is on this site, because none of it is where you should start. What's here is the conservative, cash-secured version — the one I wish someone had handed me first.

Curiosity, books, and the right way to use AI

What changed everything was simply staying curious. The knowledge is all out there. I read my way through the classics — Graham's The Intelligent Investor, Fisher's Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Lynch's One Up on Wall Street, Greenblatt's The Little Book That Beats the Market, Greenwald's Value Investing, and on the options side, Natenberg's Option Volatility and Pricing and McMillan's Options as a Strategic Investment.

With capable AI, that knowledge turns into leverage — if you know how to use it. I use AI throughout my research and writing. I even used it to build this website. What I never do is let it decide whether to buy or sell, or let it think for me. I use it to execute my thinking and to gather information for me to digest. The decisions are always mine, and yours should always be yours.

Why I built this

Because when I started, everything I ran into was about "the Wheel" — selling options, easy income, the whole pitch. Most of it is a rookie trap. I wasted a few months wheeling, convinced I was doing something clever, while my peers were quietly doing something far simpler and far better. This is the site I wish I'd found first.

— JL