Episode 228 of The Automation Station — the Friday show on The Pulse from the Tradier Hub — is one of the more honest sessions the PeakBot team has done. Instead of a victory lap, Dillon and Ben pull back the curtain on a losing stretch, dissect a trade where the bot did something unusual, and make a case for why protecting capital beats chasing a full win.
The centerpiece is a trade-by-trade breakdown of the day before. Both King AI and King AI Turbo — the 1DTE iron condors on SPX — took a rare early exit, which the guys almost never see. They map the strikes on the chart (King AI sold the 7180 call and 7035 put; Turbo sold 7160/7070), walk through how price whipsawed after 1 p.m., and explain why the AI behind King AI pulled the ripcord. The model cited a combination of factors — excessive war news, a tech sell-off, and rising volatility — and closed both positions for a partial win even though both sides were still out of the money. The kicker: had the bots held, both would have been full winners. But as they put it, the game is protecting capital and taking wins when they’re there, not risking two more hours of exposure on a chaotic day. King AI banked about $40 per unit, Turbo about $25.
That leads into a candid results review. King AI is up roughly $2,625 on $2,000 since launch, and Turbo about $3,000 since Thanksgiving, but both are nursing their largest drawdowns yet — around $2,500 — with April shaping up as the worst month since the strategies went live. The hosts don’t dress it up: these bots lose, they just win more than they lose, and trading iron condors through a stretch of war headlines and market noise is genuinely hard. They scroll back through the greener months (December through March) as a reminder that a few strong months carry the year, and that the red the bot avoided by sitting out matters as much as the green it captured.
The rest is a marketplace update. PeakBot now automates for around 20 partners, with a refreshed website that leans into the full lineup — option-selling bots, copy-trading partners, and custom algos, each showing the cash required and tickers traded. Bull Trade Finder (Nick) is the standout, up 118% on a $5,000 account since November, with Trade With Maya and Uncommon Education Trading also running hot. New partners are on the way, including Alpha Crunching (0DTE and 7DTE SPX), Dynasty Trading, futures trader Scott Pulcini, and Theta Seller. Shorebo, the zero-DTE opening range breakout, is live in a bullish put credit spread that’s holding about $26 out of the money.
They wrap with trader trivia (the purpose of the stock market is to let companies raise capital), a look at a busy week ahead built around an FOMC meeting that keeps the bots off Tuesday through Thursday, and a final plug for Trader Fest — the first annual in-person event hosted by Tradier and CBOE at PGA National in West Palm Beach, where PeakBot will be presenting.
