Elite Is What's Left

When you think of the elite, you probably think of Harvard or MIT, the Navy SEALs and Delta Force, or people like Warren Buffett, Ray Dalio, Bill Ackman and Steve Jobs. They all get to that level the same way: by ruthless elimination.

Harvard, the SEALs, Buffett and Jobs

Tens of thousands of people apply to Harvard and MIT every year, and fewer than 5 in 100 get in. Plenty of the people they turn down have top grades. Good grades are simply not enough.

Most people who start SEAL training never finish. Many of them quit during Hell Week: five and a half days of nonstop training on fewer than four hours of sleep in total.

Buffett, Dalio and Ackman hear thousands of investment ideas, and they turn down almost all of them. Buffett and Charlie Munger even had a name for where most ideas went: the "too hard" pile. If they couldn't fully understand a business, it went on that pile, however good the story sounded.

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, the company was selling dozens of products and losing money. He drew a simple grid on a whiteboard: consumer and professional, desktop and laptop, one product for each box. He cut everything else, and Apple went from dozens of products to four.

Why saying no keeps the standard

To some people this looks harsh, even unethical. I was listening to an Alex Hormozi podcast the other day where he talked about exactly this, and it all started to make sense to me. Every one of these places keeps its standard by saying no to almost everyone. There is no top 1% unless almost everyone else gets cut.

Some jobs can't work any other way, because keeping the wrong person costs too much: pilots, doctors, investors, traders. A pilot is tested before the first flight and then checked again and again for the rest of their career, because one bad decision in the air can cost hundreds of lives. Nobody wants to fly with the pilot who almost passed.

Trading runs on the same logic. The cost is money instead of lives, but the rule is the same. A trader who breaks their own rules on one bad day can give back weeks of good work in a few hours, and the market doesn't care how hard they tried; it only pays for results.

How our desk works

Our desk works the same way. We take traders in, train them and give them an account. Then we mentor them, help them grow, and support and push them through the bad weeks. That first stage is their time to work on their weak spots, with a mentor next to them.

After that, the results have to speak for the trader. Unfortunately, for most of them they never do, and we have to let most traders go within the first year. It isn't personal. The decision comes from months of numbers, and those numbers show they're not getting better. No excuses, no exceptions, no regrets. By that point they've had everything we can give: the training, the mentor, the account and the time to fix what was wrong.

The few who stay are rare. They show up every day, stick to the plan when it hurts, and take a loss when they're wrong, without resisting it. They perform and they grind, and they get a little better every month. That persistence pays off: as they climb, their accounts grow and so does their share, and everyone working next to them gets better too.

Then we raise the bar. Every group shows us something: where we picked the wrong people, what the training missed, what a mentor should have spotted earlier. We fix it, and the next group starts from a higher standard. Picking, training, onboarding, mentoring: every step gets a little better each round. We all grow, and the standard grows with us.

If you want in

If you want in, our trading test is the first cut. Taking it comes with a participation fee, which pays for the trading platform, live US market data and the team behind every test. Most people who take it do not pass. Pass our trading test, and you can trade US stocks with our money. We choose who trades our money. If you do trade it, the fee for the attempt you passed returns with your first profit share on a real account. And the cutting doesn't stop there: your results are judged every month, the same way, because that's how we stay good.

We're ruthless about results, so we owe you a fair process. The bar is the same for everyone, and nobody gets an easier version because of who they know. You can read it before you start.

If you think you're in the 1%, prove it.

See the trading test and its prices

Marketing communication. The test is taken on a simulated account with live market data. Access to the firm's capital is at hi2morrow's discretion. Not an offer of employment or investment services. Not open to residents of the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Croatia or sanctioned countries.

Author: Jamshid Ergashev, CEO of hi2morrow