Aaron Aubrey Navies grew up in Costa Mesa, California, born on August 5, 1992. He went to Elsinore High School before heading to Golden West College. Somewhere along the way, he found the futures market, and it stuck with him.
Trading futures is not a casual hobby for Aaron. He put in the work to become a certified funded trader with Topstep Futures, which meant proving he could manage risk with real discipline before anyone handed him capital to trade. Mornings still belong to the charts. He is up early, watching the market open, making decisions before most people have had their coffee.
By day, Aaron works as an appointment setter in Santa Ana. It is a different kind of work than reading candlestick patterns, but the same instincts apply: read the situation, stay patient, know when to move and when to wait.
He lives in Tustin now, not far from where he grew up. Buddhism shapes how he thinks about all of it, the markets, the calls, the quiet hours in between. He donates to Tergar, a meditation organization, and keeps his evenings simple: trading in the morning, television at night, a routine that leaves room to think.
Aaron’s path is not loud. It is built one decision at a time, which may be exactly the point.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
I’m up before the market opens so I have time to sit with the charts without rushing. I trade futures in the morning, then I shift into my day at Solar Equity Solutions, where I’m on the phone setting appointments. Having that hard line between the two keeps me from carrying one into the other. Evenings are for winding down, usually in front of the TV. I don’t try to optimize every hour. I just try to protect the ones that matter.
How do you bring ideas to life?
I treat most ideas the way I’d treat a trade setup. I don’t act on a feeling. I write it down, think through what could go wrong, and test it on a small scale before I commit to it fully. If it holds up, I build on it. If it doesn’t, I’ve lost very little finding that out.
What’s one trend that excites you?
The growth of funded trader programs. When I started, getting access to real trading capital without a large personal account was hard to find. Now there are legitimate paths, like the one I went through with Topstep, where discipline and consistency get rewarded with capital instead of a resume.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
Sitting quietly for a few minutes before I open any chart or make any call. It’s a small thing, but it clears out the noise so I’m reacting to what’s actually in front of me, not whatever mood I walked in with.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Stop treating every rejection, whether it was a losing trade or a call that didn’t go anywhere, as information about you. It’s information about that one moment. Nothing more.
Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?
I think sitting with a practice like meditation is a performance tool before it’s anything spiritual. A lot of people treat it as separate from their work, something soft on the side. I think it’s closer to training, the same way reviewing your trades is training.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
Keep a written record of your decisions, not just your results. I log my trades. I also keep notes on my calls at work, what I said, how it landed. The record matters more than the memory.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
I step away from the screen entirely. No scrolling, no half-checking the charts. I’d rather take a real break and come back clear than stay at my desk pretending to work while I’m actually just stuck.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
Sizing my effort the way I size a position. In trading, you don’t put everything into one trade. At work, I don’t put all my energy into one call or one lead. I spread my attention across the day so one bad conversation doesn’t take the rest of it down with it.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
Early on, before I was trading with any real structure, I let a few good days convince me I didn’t need rules. I gave a lot of it back. Going through the process to become a certified funded trader forced me to rebuild around actual risk limits instead of confidence. The lesson stuck: good days don’t excuse you from the plan.
What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
A simple log that tracks outbound calls or trades against the time of day and your own stated mood beforehand. Most people suspect their performance shifts with their state of mind, but almost nobody actually measures it. The pattern, once you see it on paper, changes how you schedule your hardest work.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
A plain trading journal, honestly closer to a spreadsheet than an app. I log entries, exits, and the reasoning behind each one. It’s unglamorous, but it’s the closest thing I have to an honest mirror.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?
“Market Wizards” is one I keep coming back to. It’s just interviews with traders, no gimmicks, and every one of them found a different way to the same discipline. It’s a reminder that there’s no single formula, just consistency applied however it fits you.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
I got into “Billions.” It’s dramatized, obviously, but it gets something right about the pressure of decision-making under uncertainty, which is familiar territory whether you’re trading or working a phone.
Key learnings
- Treating risk management as a transferable skill, not something confined to markets, can shape how a person handles sales, schedules, and daily decisions.
- Written records, whether trade logs or call notes, build a more honest picture of performance than memory alone.
- Structured paths into capital, like funded trader programs, are changing who gets access to serious trading opportunities.
- Short, quiet routines before high-pressure work can function as training rather than as an afterthought.