It’s been 254 episodes of The Automation Station, and Ben just announced he’s having a kid — so things are moving fast in more ways than one. Episode 254 is a Friday session that covers three returning partner pre-qualifications (Project Option, Average Joe Investor, and DT Options), a live discovery of a viewer-suggested group called Shadow Trader that neither Dylan nor Ben had seen before, a real-time look at King AI and King AI Turbo condor positions sitting inside that week’s range, and a quick economic preview for the week ahead. The format is relaxed, the conversation is genuine, and the underlying business of PeakBot — the marketplace for automated copy trading connected to Tradier — continues to grow with over 40 partners and momentum toward 50.
PeakBot: What It Is and How It Works
For anyone arriving at Ep. 254 without context, Dylan opens with the standard intro: PeakBot is a marketplace of automated trading strategies for retail traders. You connect your brokerage account — like Tradier — pick a strategy or bot from the marketplace, set your budget, and let the automation handle entries, exits, and risk management. No coding required. No manual execution. The whole point is taking the execution gap out of following a trader’s alerts or signals.
The marketplace now has over 40 partners — strategies built by real traders across options, futures, and equities — and more are coming onboard weekly. PeakBot’s own in-house strategies are kept separate from the public marketplace; for those, you contact the team directly at experience@peakbot.com. Everything else lives at peakbot.com under Browse Strategies.
Market Context: FOMC, Single-Stock Futures, and a Volatile Friday
Ben opens the market segment with two notable events. First: single-stock futures launched this week, with roughly 50 individual names now available to trade via futures contracts. Volume is thin, which is historically the challenge — single-stock futures were tried in the early 2000s and failed largely because institutional participation didn’t materialize. Whether this version gains traction remains to be seen.
Second: Wednesday’s FOMC meeting produced no rate change. The market had been pricing in a modest downside risk, and when rates held flat, that expectation reversed hard Thursday. Friday opened with a gap up overnight, sold off at the open, and then recovered — SPX sitting at roughly +0.2% by the time of the show. Michigan Consumer Sentiment data at 10:00 a.m. appears to have been the inflection point for the morning reversal, though Ben notes that wasn’t intentional timing.
Partner Pre-Qualifications: Three Who Made the Cut
The new show format introduced in the prior week involves Dylan and Ben publicly reviewing traders and educators to see if they qualify as PeakBot partners — meaning their trade alerts or signals could be copy-traded automatically into subscriber accounts via the Tradier integration.
Project Option (Chris Butler): Long-established options educator, strong YouTube presence, runs projectoption.com which combines a visual options analysis platform with live trade alerts. Dylan describes him as one of the strongest online options communities built over years. The ask: a copy trading partnership where Project Option’s alerts flow automatically into subscriber brokerage accounts. It’s admittedly a high-profile target — but Dylan’s point is that fit matters more than reach when evaluating partnership viability.
Average Joe Investor: Runs Options Income Academy with around 334 members paying roughly $25/month. The positioning is deliberately non-aggressive — income-focused, investor mindset rather than active trader. Dylan and Ben both point out that an educated community is actually ideal for copy trading adoption: subscribers who understand what’s happening are less likely to panic or manually override automation, which leads to better outcomes.
DT Options (Derek): Runs a Patreon and a YouTube channel with 9,200 subscribers. Focuses on SPX double diagonal credit spreads and TQs — strategies that align directly with the types of defined-risk, income-oriented positions that copy trading handles well. Derek’s audience is already engaged with the content; the partnership would give them a way to actually take the trades live without manual execution.
All three have passed the initial screen. Outreach has started. The goal is to get calendar time with each of them and walk through the copy trading value proposition from both the educator’s and subscriber’s perspective.
Live Discovery: Shadow Trader
One of the more organic moments in the episode. Doug, a regular show viewer, drops Shadow Trader in the chat. Neither Dylan nor Ben has heard of them. Ben pulls up shadowtrader.com in real time.
What they find: a team of multiple traders — led by Peter Resnick, who does daily trading and weekly market breakdowns — offering a weekly options advisory service. 43,000 followers on X, 106,000 YouTube subscribers, and individual videos pulling 13,000–22,000 views. Based near Philadelphia (Haverford, PA). The site offers live trading suite memberships on 3-month and 12-month terms.
Dylan’s immediate question after seeing the YouTube numbers: “How has this not come across our desk?” The answer, as he acknowledges, is volume — there are simply too many quality educators and traders in the space to have found all of them yet. That’s part of why the viewer-suggestion segment exists.
Shadow Trader trades across stocks, options, and futures — all three asset classes that PeakBot works with. Dylan closes the segment with a direct-to-camera invitation: “You’ve come highly referred. Let’s talk. Let’s work together.”
King AI Condors: Live Positions for the Day
Ben walks through the active PeakBot AI positions still open at the time of the show — condor spreads structured around the SPX for that Friday session.
King AI: Sold the 7335 put / 7515 call. $170 credit collected. Range the market needs to stay inside for the trade to work.
King AI Turbo: Tighter strikes — 7380 put / 7495 call. $355 credit collected. More premium, more risk, less buffer.
Ben’s framing is direct: two wins at Turbo’s credit level cover one max loss. For traders comfortable with defined-risk spreads who want elevated income, these structures are designed for that profile. The AI determines strike selection, entry timing, and — critically — whether to sit out around high-risk economic events.
Economic Events Preview: Watch NFP Friday
The rest of the current day has oil rig count data — low market impact. Next week:
Monday: Manufacturing PMI data. Low risk for bots.
Tuesday: Jobs reports (post-open). Not historically a bot shutdown trigger but monitored.
Wednesday–Thursday: Services data and light calendar. Business as usual.
Friday: Non-Farm Payroll (NFP) + unemployment data. This is the one Dylan and Ben flag explicitly. King Condor will not trade Thursday into Friday. NFP has blown up condor positions too many times to leave those structures exposed.
The AI bots make their own call on NFP — the system evaluates whether the risk profile justifies trading or sitting out, rather than relying on a fixed rule. One DT (one-day-to-expiration) bots will generally pause. Longer-duration structures get evaluated individually.
Closing Note: Ben’s Announcement and What Comes Next
Ben reveals he’s expecting a child — which explains why the show may go dark for a little while. Dylan confirms the one legitimate backup plan: pulling Thomas back from the bullpen to keep The Automation Station running. It’s a light moment that closes out the 254th episode on a personal note.
Future episodes will continue the new format: three returning pre-qualified partners checked in on, three new traders screened live, and ongoing review of the PeakBot marketplace as it expands toward 50 active partners.
