Day 1 — The Setup

Today I officially started my options trading journey. Not with a trade — but with the infrastructure. The platform. The homework. The plan.

I've been working with Ed from Go Maz to learn options from the ground up. Ed built go-maz.com — a trading system that screens stocks, checks them against a rule-based framework, and suggests setups. I actually helped him build the site using Claude and Cloudflare, so I know the tech. Now I need to learn what the data actually means.

This blog is the documentation of that process. Every lesson, every mistake, every trade — logged here in public.

The Starting Point

I funded a Tastytrade account with $1,000. That's it. That's the bankroll. Ed made it very clear — do not worry about paper trading. Real money, real stakes, but with strict risk management. The goal is to learn by doing with small, controlled positions.

Ed's Framework

Ed laid out a simple, repeatable system for a beginner with a small account:

He explained that options pricing is based on the Black-Scholes model and that options serve three purposes: hedging, income, and speculation. For now, I'm in learning-and-small-speculation mode.

Ed also walked me through a quick example: a 56-delta AAPL June 18 call was priced around $1,800 — way out of my range. But a 20-delta option on the same stock? Around $350. And with a 50% stop loss, the max damage is $175. That's the sweet spot for a $1K account.

The Homework

Ed assigned some prep work before our next session:

• Watch Dr. Jim's intro videos on calls, puts, and the Greeks
• Study the VIX — what it is, how volatility impacts option pricing
• Learn to read an options chain on Tastytrade
• Explore the Go Maz dashboard: screener, stock checker, money flow
• Understand the concept of delta — specifically why 20-delta is the target

Key Terms I Need to Learn

Term	What It Means (So Far)
Delta	How much an option's price moves per $1 move in the stock. 20-delta = roughly 20% chance of being in-the-money at expiration.
Theta	Time decay — how much value the option loses each day. Works against buyers.
IV Rank	Where current implied volatility sits relative to the past year. Low IV = cheaper options = better for buying.
Strike Price	The price you're betting the stock will reach.
Premium	What you pay for the option contract. This is your max risk when buying.
Stop Loss	An automatic sell order that limits your loss. Ed says 50% — if I buy at $200, I sell at $100.

What's Next

Tomorrow I'll dig into the Go Maz screener results from today's scan (full analysis in the next post). The screener found 8 tickers with strong setups — AMD, NVDA, AMZN, TSLA, MSFT, BA, DIS, and RIVN. I need to cross-reference those against Ed's 20-delta / $200 budget framework and figure out which ones actually fit a $1K account.

Ed is also rolling out a $5/month program on Go Maz starting tomorrow. That's going to be my main learning tool alongside Tastytrade's education platform.