Selfmade, at the desk.
The same eight principles — applied to the market that pays me.
Selfmade is the system I use to build a life. Trading is the work I use to fund it. This page is where the two meet: the daily mechanics of how I make a living from the market, written by someone who actually pulls the trigger.
If you’re here from the newsletter, this is Principle 07 — Freedom — made operational. If you landed here first, everything on this page is built on a system you can read about on the rest of the site.
Not theory. Not gurus. Not screenshots of someone else’s P&L. Ownership, discipline, and a real job done in real markets.
Freedom isn’t a feeling. It’s a line item on a spreadsheet.
Selfmade says the same thing in eight different ways: nobody is coming, so you build it yourself. Principle 07 — Freedom — is the one that puts numbers on it. Money that works without you. Time that belongs to you. Hours you own instead of rent.
Trading is one of the few paths that delivers that for someone starting with no capital, no credentials, and no permission. It’s not the only path — the newsletter covers the others — but it’s the one I do full-time, and it’s the one people keep asking me about. So here it is.
I’m Indy Karveli. I trade for a living. No signal service. No bootcamp pitch. No affiliate links to a broker. Just the same system I apply to everything else — ownership, discipline, architecture, focus — pointed at a market that pays in dollars if you do the work right, and takes dollars if you don’t.
What you’ll find here: a free glossary, a running journal of what I’m seeing in the markets, an honest explanation of how someone with no money can actually get started, and — soon — the full system I run, as a course for people who want to trade seriously.
You don’t need capital. You need the system to use it.
This is the answer to the question I get most: “Indy, I want to take control of my finances but I have no money to trade. What do I do?”
You trade somebody else’s money. Prop firms — short for proprietary trading firms — are companies that fund traders with their own capital. You pay a small fee to take an evaluation. You trade on a demo account inside their rules — hit a profit target without breaking the daily and max loss limits — and they hand you a funded account. Real money. When it makes profit, you split it with them. Usually 80/20 or 90/10 in your favour.
No savings required. No bank loan. No years of compounding before you’re allowed to pull a trigger. The only thing you pay is the evaluation fee — usually a few hundred dollars for access to an account in the tens of thousands — and if you blow it, you’re out the fee. Not your life savings. Not your house. The fee.
This is Selfmade in practice. Ownership: your outcomes are yours. Discipline: you follow the rules or the account is gone. Architecture: you build the system before you need it. Focus: you take the setups you trust, and ignore everything else. It’s the closest thing trading has to an apprenticeship — and it exists specifically because there are more disciplined traders with no capital than there is capital with nobody to trade it.
What makes this viable
- Accounts from $10,000 up to $200,000 and beyond, for a few hundred dollars in fees.
- Payouts actually happen. The serious firms wire money to traders every week.
- Forces the discipline most people never impose on themselves — exactly why most beginners fail on their own money too.
- Zero personal capital at risk beyond the evaluation fee. You lose the fee, not your runway.
What they don’t tell you
- The pass rate is low. Most people fail the evaluation. The firms make money because of it.
- Their rules are tight on purpose. One bad day over the daily loss limit and the account is gone, profits included.
- You still need a real system. A funded account in untrained hands lasts about a week.
- Not every firm is reputable. Some delay payouts, change rules mid-stream, or quietly disappear. Do your homework.
This is how I’d start over today with nothing. Not as a get-rich promise — as a get-skilled one. Learn the mechanics. Build a system. Prove it works on a cheap evaluation before you risk anything of your own. If you pass, you have a funded account and a way to pay yourself. If you don’t, you’re out a few hundred dollars and you’ve learned more about yourself than most people do in a year.
I don’t take commissions from any prop firm and I don’t run affiliate links. If you want my actual list of firms I trust and the ones I avoid, that’s in the journal.
The Trader’s Glossary.
Ownership starts with understanding the thing you’re doing. This is every term you’ll hear on a trading floor — explained in plain English by someone who uses them every day.
Forty-plus pages. No filler. Built for the person who’s tired of Googling the same terms five times and still not understanding them. This is the book I wish I’d had when I started.
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Latest notes from the desk.
The Selfmade Trading System.
The eight principles, operationalised in markets. The full system — setups, sizing, and the mindset to run it for years — built for people who want trading to fund the life Selfmade is about building.
The setups I actually take
Focus applied to the chart. The handful of patterns I trust enough to risk real money on — why they work, when they don’t, and how to tell the difference in thirty seconds.
Position sizing and risk
Resilience, in numbers. The single most important part of trading and the part every beginner skips. How much to risk. How to size. When to press. When to cut. How to build the floor before you need it.
The psychology of staying in
Identity and discipline at the desk. Why profitable traders still blow up accounts — and the mental frame that keeps you in the chair when your system says stay and your stomach says run.
The daily operating system
Architecture, day by day. Pre-market prep. Session routine. Post-mortem journaling. The boring infrastructure that turns a few good trades into a career.
Join the waitlist.
First access when it opens. Founding-member pricing. Already on the Selfmade newsletter? Sign up here anyway — this list is separate so you get trading-specific updates without cluttering the main feed.
A note on trading. Ownership means owning your outcomes — including the losing ones. Everything on this page is a record of what I do and think, not financial advice. Trading carries real risk of real loss, and no system, mine included, removes that risk. If you can’t afford to lose the money on the screen, you have no business putting it there. Do the work. Build the skill. Own the result, whatever it is.