🚨 I’ll be live at 9 a.m. ET🚨
We’ll cover the off-again-on-again Iran war, expected move, CPI inflation print incoming, bonus trades with a 25 VIX and more [tap to join us for the Daily Profit Plan]!
I came across something that may just change how you think about trading psychology and account performance.
Tom Lee from Fundstrat shared a striking stat during one of his media appearances: The best-performing accounts at a major 401K broker last year belonged to two groups — people who forgot their passwords and people who were dead.
Let that sink in for a moment.
The investors who couldn’t log in to their accounts — either because they forgot how or because they literally weren’t alive anymore — outperformed everyone else.
That includes all the active traders constantly monitoring positions, adjusting strategies and reacting to every headline.
This isn’t just a funny anecdote. It’s a brutal lesson in how human psychology destroys portfolio returns.
Why Dead Investors Beat Active Traders
Think about what happened in 2024. Countless traders panicked during the sharp drops in March and April, bailing out at the exact wrong moment only to watch the market grind higher for the next seven or eight straight months.
That single emotional decision — selling at the bottom — cost them more than any market crash ever could.
And this pattern isn’t unusual. The market tends to have more winning weeks than losing weeks, a dynamic that has held true for decades. When you zoom out, staying invested or taking a passive approach often aligns you with the natural upward drift of the market, while active tinkering usually pulls you out of that flow.
Here’s the thing — 2025 was a particularly challenging year with significant volatility, yet the accounts that couldn’t react to market moves crushed the active traders.
That tells you everything you need to know about the real enemy in trading. It’s not volatility. It’s not market crashes. It’s not even black swan events…
It’s you.
It’s all of us making emotional decisions when we should be doing absolutely nothing.
What This Means for Your Trading Approach
This dead investor phenomenon is exactly why I structure my options approach the way I do. Once a position is set on Monday in Engineered Options, there’s really nothing left to do. We don’t have to babysit the positions, we don’t need to time our exit, we don’t even have to close the trade manually.
It’s built to operate without constant oversight.
By removing the need to monitor every tick, the strategy shields you from the same emotional traps that sabotage most traders. You aren’t tempted to react to noise, because there’s nothing to manage.
As long as the market climbs or stays at break-even or better — even just a tenth of 1% over the next week — we should automatically collect the full 100% payout by the following Monday.
The beauty of this structure is that it doesn’t matter if you invest $250, $500 or $2,500. The position should be doubling by the very next Monday, and you never had to check it once.
That’s the set-and-forget approach in action. That’s how you trade like a dead investor — without actually being dead, which I would imagine is pretty important to everyone.
The biggest threat to your portfolio performance isn’t what the market does. It’s what you do in response to what the market does. And the data proves that the less you do, the better off you are.
I’ll see you in the markets.
Chris Pulver
Chris Pulver Trading
Follow along and join the conversation for real-time analysis, trade ideas, market insights and more!
- Telegram:https://t.me/+av20QmeKC5VjOTc5
- YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@FinancialWars
- Twitter:https://x.com/realchrispulver
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/therealchrispulver
Important Note: No one from the ProsperityPub team or Chris Pulver Trading will ever contact you directly on Telegram.
*This is for informational and educational purposes only. There is inherent risk in trading, so trade at your own risk.
P.S. 1 Weird Trade Would Have Doubled a Stake 31 Times in 2025 Alone…
And I recently teamed up with a former hedge fund trader to reveal every single detail…
Including why I believe this special option could present more opportunities in 2026!
Would you like to get the full story?
Yes! Show Me the Weird Options in Action
We develop strategies to the best of our ability, but we cannot guarantee a future return. There is always a risk of loss when trading. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The results shown are from a 237-trade backtest from 1/1/20 – 1/1/26. The result was a 70% win rate, 40% average return (winners and losers), with a 7-day hold time.
