Scared money makes no money, and reckless money makes it once. 0DTE is one of the most dangerous instruments in the market. We trade it anyway, because danger priced by rules is opportunity. Here is the religion.
Every position carries a hard cap decided while the head is cold. The most a trade can lose is known before the first dollar is committed. If the cap can't be set, the trade doesn't exist.
Nothing is carried into expiry. The book returns to cash every trading day. Overnight risk is somebody else's business model.
Hard trade counts per session. Sizing capped as a percentage of equity. A daily circuit breaker beneath a global halt, and a kill switch above them all. The rails are load-bearing precisely on the days they feel unnecessary.
The cage isn't fear. Fear sizes the trade wrong. The cage sizes it right, then lets it swing.
Entries, sizing, exits, loss caps: written, versioned, and binding. Changes fight through the platform's tuner and the simulated book before they touch anything real. The system decides. The operator executes.
Recorded, replayed, and graded by a frontier model against the spec: what the rules said, what the operator did, where the two disagreed, and what the disagreement cost. Most traders remember their wins. We keep the tape.
Every rulebook earns promotion on the research board or retires there. The board keeps the losers visible because the graveyard is the proof the process works.
Scared money makes no money. Undisciplined money makes it once.