Investment returns are more than twice the salary with no drawdowns. I don't want to go to work anymore.

Before I traded stocks, I never could get the buy and sell points right. I ended up tinkering for a long time, and when everything was tallied, the profit was about the same as what I would have earned from buying financial products. I felt like I just wasn’t suited for stock trading.
I started doing options and futures in 23. In the first few months I made small allocations, learning and doing at the same time, and I tried all kinds of strategies. I often got slapped in both directions. Starting in 24, I only did hedging strategies. I kept summarizing and improving. My returns gradually became stable. Up to now, there have only been two temporary large drawdowns: one was 924, and the other was this year’s early IC and IM basis widening significantly. But because it’s a hedge using the same underlying contracts, the price that deviates extremely can’t stay that way for more than a few days. In the end, I quickly recovered my floating loss. Calculated by monthly delivery dates, there’s no drawdown in returns.
Core strategy: initial principal of 500 contracts—no adding, no subtracting. Each month’s profit portion is directly put into a reverse repo for half a year. Even if I make a major mistake, I still have the foundation to bounce back. I only do hedging strategies. When opening positions, I can calculate the maximum possible loss, and keep it within 5%. I only open trades when the price is relatively far from the norm. When it returns to normal, I close the position. When there isn’t a clear opportunity, I stay in cash and wait. I don’t bet on up or down, and I’m not greedy. I strictly follow the strategy. As a programmer, I’ve considered every possible scenario, and for now I don’t see any major risks.
Although over the past two years my stock account hasn’t dared to buy AI-related stocks, I’ve still benefited from AI. Because my job is adjacent to AI (software/hardware development related to data center communications control), my salary growth has been very fast, but I’ve also felt the threat brought by AI—especially the Claude Code that the company has been rolling out recently. As long as the prompts you input are accurate enough, it really can quickly take over most of your work. Before, I used to work 2 or 3 hours a day and spent the rest of the time fooling around. After using AI, if there’s work to do, you just hand it directly to AI, and in about an hour it can finish the entire day’s tasks. So the idea that programmers will be replaced by AI is only a matter of time, and it’s necessary to make preparations before the trouble comes.
The company lays off some people every year. The other day I told my leader that there were layoff slots available and asked if they could give one to me first. After I’ve been at the company for 10 years already, the compensation is close to 100. Don’t take it for granted—if it’s offered, you might as well take it. My leader was very shocked and tried to persuade me for half a day, and then told me that even if there were slots, it wouldn’t be my turn. Later they said they would raise my salary, and I submitted it, waiting for the U.S. side to approve. But my salary has no longer had much appeal for me. Every year, my family expenses are just over 100k.
Once I’m over 40, I can clearly feel my body is not as good as before. Sitting at the office for 8 hours a day makes my neck and lower back uncomfortable. They say the average life expectancy for Chinese men is 67 years. It feels like I won’t last much longer, so I’d rather do what makes me comfortable.

![](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/social/moments-3fc89d6674-c2f07860fb-8b7abd-badf29)