A few years ago I had an interview with this finance firm in nashville. Ended up getting coffee with these nerds and they asked me what my “favorite excel function was”. I honestly had no idea wtf would be a good answer to that, nor did I care, and they side-eyed eachother & smirked like i was a mouthbreathing moron. I was already profitably swinging a decent size port at that point and thought have some “traditional finance experience” was what I needed to level up. …until I realized it was the opposite. You can win unconventionally. In fact, you’re MORE likely to win if you’re unconventional. I used to think I needed to understand everything about traditional finance, excel, functions, spreadsheets, formulas… But i quickly realized that the only thing that matters is the number on the screen going up. You can do that any way you want. Infinite ways to make the number go up. You can make it as simple or complicated as you want. I knew a dude that literally picked stocks based on his stargazing. Or my friend that only looks at charts upside down. Just crazy stuff. But it worked so it didn’t matter. and there are so many different stories like this. what I’m trying to say is: you carve your own style, edge, and alpha. It’s literally infinite what you can try. you don’t have to be cookie-cutter finance bro…you just have to make money.