My younger son has a Nintendo Switch 2, and buried inside it is something wonderful for an 80s gamer like me.
Nintendo runs a retro app called Nintendo Classics. Download it and you get 95 games from my childhood. The original Legend of Zelda, Kid Icarus, Kirby's Adventure, and where it all started for me: Super Mario Brothers.
I've got to tell you, that game is still REALLY REALLY FUN.
No 15 buttons to memorize, just smooth side-scrolling action and a jump button. Forty years on, it holds up.
I got my first crack at it in 1987. My older sister Michelle and I have birthdays eight days apart, so we banded together and asked for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a combined present. We begged, we pleaded, we bargained, and most important, we behaved for about two months leading into those birthdays.
The message got through. After 18 months of asking, my parents relented and bought us the NES. We set it up in the basement, and for the rest of that summer we went outside only when forced.
Over the next few years we accumulated dozens of games, and I wish I'd kept them. Heritage Auctions sold a sealed Super Mario Brothers cartridge in June for $3 million, the most anyone has ever paid for a video game.
I've owned a Sega Genesis, a PlayStation 1 and 2, and a Wii since then. The Wii was my last system before I had kids. Now the boys run the hardware budget.
In trading it's easy to chase the new and shiny. Who needs regular stocks when I can trade 3x leveraged ETFs? For a lot of traders the newest product pulls them in five directions at once.
Don't get me wrong, growing matters. Option Pit has been out front on just about every new product that's come along. We were teaching VIX strategies before most people knew how to trade the thing, we were early on 0DTE in SPX and QQQ, and we're doing it now in single stocks.
But every new product has a Super Mario Brothers built into it. We take what we've learned over the years, how we've actually made money, and we apply that to whatever we're trading now.
Take the 1DTE Mastermind Licia is running. The new part is the Tilt, her read on how the next morning's open is likely to trade.
Everything that confirms the Tilt isn't new at all. Candlesticks, trendlines, support and resistance, RSI, MACD, ATR, and her pitchforks (the same chart tools traders have leaned on for decades).
She didn't throw out one thing she learned. She aimed years of chart work at an idea that barely existed a few years ago: overnight expirations.
Should you join the Mastermind? Yes, and you can learn about it here.
The message is don't forget the past.
Super Mario Brothers still brings the fun 40 years later, and the methods that worked back then still have a use case today.
If you're stuck trying to figure out how to make money on something new to you, start with what you already know.
Your Only Option,
Mark Sebastian