u/brian-augustin

Saw a documentary last night comparing USA to china and how china is moving towards renewables. Doc also mentioned how far behind the US is with power. Not sure how many more data centers will be built but "The proposed "Stratos Project" hyperscale data center in Box Elder County, Utah, is expected to consume (9GW) of power at full buildout"

Based on that documentary I think energy can skyrocket and be the next top trending sector.

I've been researching some energy stocks:

These are my favorites:

BTE, CVE, EFXT, KGS, NESR, SEI

but these are all oil and gas

Is it possible renewables will be the next move? Or nuclear?

Did a scan of everything and oil and gas seems most interesting with solid movement and great price action.

Lots of posts say solar but, imo solar is slow and can't power data centers. Solar stocks are also stagnant and/or dead price action.

Maybe ticker: NXT

Nuclear stocks and ETFs look stagnant right now and/or dead

My point of post is, oil and gas is a "finite resource" - not unlimited, can oil and gas still be the trending sub sector in a few years? It can't possibly sustain the amount of energy our grids are going to require in the future not to mention when the average citizen is already paying the price of increased bills.

Another sub sector I think that can benefit from this is the construction companies.

Some tickers I'm eying are:

FIX, MTZ, MYRG (MYRG, MTZ says on the website they do energy infrastructure)

Could run up massively

When I trade stocks I pay for software, without having an LLC (for various reasons) can I deduct those payments on a Schedule C for April 2027?

Not sure if this is true but AI, and I think reddit I saw you can no longer deduct software or discord subscriptions for trading?

When I was filing my taxes this year I didn't see anywhere to put down software of misc. expenses?

Would you rather take yearly sustainable income growth or Compound Annual Growth?

I'm in two predicaments right not sure what I should do with my money, I have two options.

Option 1 is get a unknown range of income a year, but I can scale up when its doing good. Its giving around right now 100-130% Annualized Return based off 8 months of data. Rounding down about 110% in 6 months.

I did some math and on the low end 20-30k maybe high end 50k profit a year off 20-25k.

Last 60 days I made 3k off 20k but lost it all due to setbacks. Its fast easy money but a drawdown can set you back a few weeks or month.

Option 1 is not affected by bear markets.

Option 1 can debatably under preform if you go all in on one stock or ETF that gains 100%+ in a bull run.

Ex: $DRAM, I heard about it while it was in the $30s range, but was doing option 1 and missed the 50-60% monthly gain.

I did the math and talked to people doing option 1, someone is at 92% Annual Return in 5 months off 25k. (25k to 36k in 5 months). He was up 209% Annualized Return but there was the setback. (25k to 40k in 5 months)

Option 1 can't aggressively "rolling profits" or "compounding gains". The profits have to sit in your account until you reach 30% buffer until you can scale up.

I'm doing 20k, hoping to get on the low end 40k to high end 50k portfolio size by the end of the year. I can then scale up to (25k - with 30% buffer so at 32k) and make a little more per month (if performance is good)

or

Option 2 take Compound Annual Growth Gains, this requires more effort, more research and more time but if the market is in a bull run. Gains can quickly multiply and depending on the investment can outperform option 1.

-

I asked AI about the return rate and its saying Option 1 has a great return most people only get 20% returns yearly. While on the low end I might be getting 10% monthly.

When I was doing Option 2 I managed to get 50% Annual Return in a year 2025-2026, but that was me new to the stock market and also going through 3 major bear cycles (Sweeping new tariff policies, AI Fears & Iran War)

Would love to know peoples opinions.

I'm at a major cross road right now and I'm looking for advice.

For the better start of the year until last month I was swing trading shares . 3 months I made about 25% profit off the tech boom up until the war with iran.

I pulled my money out of the stock market and was holding cash... thinking the market was going to dip more. While that was happening I discovered copytrading spreads.

Copytrading spreads is a bot that the owner auto executes spreads on your broker account. Has a 91% win rate and 13% monthly return. I was doing good on the copytrading made 4k off 20k in 1.5 months until today where I lost that 4k due to the market pushing up.

The bot has an amazing track record

Statistics
Total Return $$5,845
Total Return %116.9%
"Avg Monthly
Return (to date)" 13.0%
"Annualized Return"155.9%
Win Rate 91.3%
Total Wins 158
Total Losses 15
Average Win $68
Average Loss -$325
Largest Win $220.00
Largest Loss -$695
Cash Needed $5,000
Profit Factor $2.20
Win Loss Ratio- 0.209
Expected Value 90.16

Giving 116% total return, 5.8k return per unit

1unit=5k needed. I was trading on 4 units. (20k)

All was going so well until this week, lost 700$ yesturday and 3.9k today. My account went from 31k to 26k. Back to exactly where I started when I pulled my money out.

The biggest regret I have is while I pulled out of the market the market rallied to ATHs and tech is booming. I could have doubled my money in some cases.

On a good month, if the bot returns 1k per unit, I can make 4k per month off 20k and scale up - up to 15 units max. Maybe making 10k-15k per month.

I need advice: Should I go back to the stock market, or copy trade the bot?

I'm seeing alot of contract positions being listed, and it turns me off applying for them. Yes its experience but with the way the job market is, why apply to a contract position if its just tempory, your going to end up working the job then needing to find another one.

Someone told me they do contract because they don't want to pay you benefits.

Another job posting I saw that was contract was only 3 months, I understand its experience and something to put on a resume but are those jobs really worth applying to?

I want to write off software subscriptions I'm using for a trading bot for next years taxes.

I'm taking 0DTE (0 days) spread trades, once everyday - sometimes multiple times per day.

I also have already maybe 60-90k worth of total trade volume in shares this year, doing swing trading using shares.

I consider myself very active and am on everyday.

Asking AI for advice it says getting approved for TTS is hard and lack of trading can cause an audit. It also advises you can only deduct 3k in expenses?

I can't create an LLC for various reasons so thats out of the question, but AI says having an LLC doesn't get you the deduction TTS does.

My question is, how hard is it to deduct expenses on taxes using TTS (Trader Tax Status), how to avoid audits?

I filed my taxes this year myself and didn't see TTS option anywhere?

Should I speak to a CPA first?

Been applying for a few months on ziprecruiter for local jobs, got 3 interests 1 interview nothing so far. I would prefer a remote job so I can just work from my home but not sure if remote jobs are a thing only during covid.

Is it worth applying to remote jobs, did any of you get a remote job recently? How many applicants what made you stand out? Should I focus on local or remote?