Not only did he climb to the top of the hill swarmed with competition to become one of the few Premium StockTwits Network members, he is also Nasdaq’s Top Data Junkies, has over 2600 Twitter followers, and owns his own TV segment on StockTwits TV.

Now that’s talent.

So how did he get there? Read on…

When people think “electrical engineer” they generally relate that to big complicated circuits and other hardware-related topics. But that’s not necessarily the case, as there’s different specialities you can go into with an EE degree. I focused on digital signal processing, random processes, and some statistics. Having that sort of background is very helpful, especially with options. Options add an extra dimension of time, so you have to consider the statistical distribution of a signal (stock price) over a certain amount of time as determined by the option contract specifications.

My career path has definitely centered around the social web– I’ve come into contact with a lot of really smart and talented people, and I would not have if I didn’t have the ability to socially leverage my “brand” through twitter, blogging, and comment reputation via Disqus and intense debate. All of the people I’m working with now have been the result of months of developing relationships with no real expectation of a business endeavor. It’s critical to develop relationships before there’s money involved; if you just go out to random people and start pitching, they won’t listen.

There’s a clear distinction between knowledge gained when it comes to trading. First is book knowledge– I went out and picked up books that I felt were relevant with what I wanted to do. The rule of thumb with trading books is that the uglier the cover is, the better the information. Books with a celebrity or flashy graphics on the cover generally will be tripe.

Second is practical knowledge, and this was the hardest to gain before this set of information permeated through the internet. The best way to get this is following successful traders online. Many have blogs that you can read– the ugly rule applies here too, but not as much. Approach any fancy sites with a dose of skepticism. You also want to watch out for “gurus” that have plenty of hindsight bias and a lack of transparency. The best finance bloggers are the ones that admit they have been wrong in the past.

Third is psychological knowledge. This only comes when you have skin in the game and have the ability to lose money. Until you’ve actually done that, you haven’t been stress tested. This is what separates true success and failure for trading and active investing. Learning about the natural bias that traders have as well as looking to overcome your own will give you a leg up on 80% of the traders out there. Keeping a trade journal is the best way to analyze oneself and is critical when starting out.

The goal of IWO is to Enhance returns, reduce risk, and print money. Options give you all that, but it’s going to depend on your strategy. If you want leverage, you can easily get that on the options market. Front month at the money options for AAPL are currently giving you a 19x leveraged return vs buying the stock in a non-margined account. But the trade-off with options is the extrinsic, or premium, you’re willing to pay for the added protection and leverage. So you can be a premium buyer or a premium seller, and it’s dependent on your strategy.

Sometimes, though, options just suck. If you’re day trading sometimes the options are less liquid and the market makers aren’t playing nice, so it just makes sense to play stock.

With each options trade, you need to come in with a clear idea of how much you are willing to pay for the trade. That’s your risk, and it’s what you’ll lose if you’re trading thesis is wrong. You can do that by looking at the delta of the option, which is the change of the price versus the change in the underlying, and close the position if the stock proves your thesis wrong.

You can also look at other fixed-risk plays such as verticals, calendars, and iron condors that can give you a better range of profitability without the risk of just buying options.

I started IWO around October-ish because I wanted to put my trade ideas out there in real time, and gain some exposure in the finance community. I felt that building a reputation was something I wanted to do, and I also wanted to share ideas with the community that helped me with the practical knowledge.

There’s famous, and there’s internet famous. Being internet famous means that noone knows who you really are except a core group of people that know you really well, and that’s what has developed with IWO. There have been people that were following me when I was just on my own video stream drinking beer Wednesday night and talking stocks.

I feel that we are really on the ground floor when it comes to a well developed financial community. Stocktwits has some great ideas coming out here soon that I haven’t seen anywhere else. We’re just beginning when it comes to the social aspect of finance, and online finance TV is just on the cusp of an emerging trend. I’m so glad I was able to catch the trend just starting, and I plan to ride it up until Oprah mentions it, then I’m selling out.

There’s a handful, if you go to my twitter page you can see who I’m following– that’s a good place to start.

I don’t make predictions like that! Instead, I want to keep a balanced portfolio where I make money over time by selling premium, and use that premium to make trades in individual stocks.