Big Daddy Max
Army veteran Big Daddy Max made the 15-minute opening range breakout his signature and built Max Options Trading into a live network of up to six futures shows a day.
Compiled by MarketFramework editorial · Last reviewed Oct 17, 2026
▶ Featured video · Oct 22, 2025Editorial profile. Big Daddy Max is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by MarketFramework or MyFundedFutures, and this profile is not endorsed by Max. MarketFramework is operated by MyFundedFutures, a futures prop firm. Compiled from public sources; performance figures are as stated by the creator and are not independently verified. Corrections & removal requests.
Big Daddy Max is a US Army veteran and the founder of Max Options Trading, a trading education community he launched in 2020. He is best known for teaching the 15-minute opening range breakout on Nasdaq futures. Alongside a free Discord of nearly 79,000 traders, he hosts the Big Daddy Morning Show and the Traders and Haters podcast.
Trades
Nasdaq futures
NQ · MNQ · ES on screen
Style
15-minute ORB
candle-confirmed breakouts at the open
Experience
8+ years
by his own account · options first
Based
United States
YouTube
189K
subscribers · Oct 2026
Live shows
Up to 6 a day
about 30 streams a week · Oct 2026
Streams live
Mon–Fri · 9 am–4:15 pm ET, Morning Show to Power Hour
Next stream: Mon–Fri · 9 am–4:15 pm ET, Morning Show to Power Hour · open channel
LIVE FROM MYFUNDEDFUTURES
Where prop traders are positioned in NQ right now
Max's market, read from thousands of live MyFundedFutures evaluation and funded accounts.
Loading live positioning…
Open Positioning Edge for the full chart, history and time & sales. Not trade advice.
BEST KNOWN FOR
The 15-minute ORB and a six-show live network
The 15-minute opening range breakout is the setup Big Daddy Max is best known for. "Trading the 15 minute ORB the MAX way!" is his most-watched long-form video at 380,000 views, and a one-minute Short that boils it down to "2 lines and some candles" sits near 800,000. Around that setup he built the Max Options Trading Network: up to six live futures shows a day, the Traders and Haters podcast and a free Discord of nearly 79,000 traders.
IN MAX'S WORDS
“I do not fish for you, I teach you how to fish so you can make a secondary stream of income.”
Starter Story interview, May 2022
“I want people to know that it takes years to become a profitable professional trader.”
TradeZella interview, July 2023
“All you need is 2 lines and some candles!”
YouTube Short, June 2024
Big Daddy Max's featured video
“Everything You Need to Know About ORB and How I Use It - Webinar” · published Oct 22, 2025 · 186K views
Who is Big Daddy Max?
Big Daddy Max runs something closer to a television network than a trading channel, and the name says so: the Max Options Trading Network. In a typical week its YouTube channel goes live about 30 times, from a London-session show at 2:50 am Eastern to an evening show for the Asia session. He anchors the flagship Big Daddy Morning Show at the New York open, and a cast of co-hosts carries the rest. A free Discord of nearly 79,000 traders follows along. At the centre of it all sits the setup he is known for, the 15-minute opening range breakout, taught with candlesticks and a few horizontal lines.
Max took the long way to the charts. As he tells it, he started his adult life as a high school dropout, then spent almost a decade in the military and law enforcement, including service as a US Army paratrooper. At 30 he was a salesman, trading on the side and active in Discord groups where traders swapped ideas on stocks and options. Before long, several members asked him to run a group of his own. Max Options Trading opened in early 2020 with 50 subscribers on day one, just as COVID-19 reached the United States. He remembers building it while sitting against the wall of his unfinished house, typing on a mini-tablet.
Options came first. He describes his path from profitable swing trader to full-time options seller, and his free 2021 Big Daddy Max Beginner Course is still one of the channel’s most-watched uploads. By January 2024 he was trading live on YouTube every day. That May he posted the video that came to define the channel. "Trading the 15 minute ORB the MAX way!" has passed 380,000 views, and two long-form ORB webinars have drawn more than 350,000 between them. More than 3,000 students in over 40 countries attended one of them live.
Around the strategy he has built a full education business. His own course, The Maxstermind, runs to more than 30 hours of instruction with a heavy emphasis on NQ scalping, plus a private student Discord. Futures One pairs his scalping frameworks with co-instructor Antonio Lama’s P2P strategy, built on Fibonacci retracements and ICT principles. It adds bonus sessions from traders including Tori Trades. There are also MOT indicators for WealthCharts and TradingView, among them an Advanced ORB tool, and coaching with Max or his team. Since January 2025 he and Lama have also hosted the Traders and Haters podcast, recorded in front of a live audience. Podcast guests have ranged from CNBC’s Mike Khouw to NinjaTrader’s Dan Hodgman, and Take Profit Trader chief executive James Sixsmith joined him on the Morning Show in March 2026.
The cadence is the point. London Highs opens the trading day at 2:50 am Eastern, and the Morning Show follows at about 9 am. Learn How to Trade, 1300 with Logan and the Power Hour Special carry the screen through the close. MOT Happy Hour covers the Asia session from Sunday to Thursday. In July 2026 Tradeify TV gave his story a full episode of its Funded podcast, titled "From Rock Bottom to the Biggest Name in Prop Trading". In it he explains why he has not missed a day of posting in seven years. The shows have moved into real rooms too. Live and Unfiltered brought the community to Hollywood, Florida, at the end of January 2026, and MOT Blitz II is set to bring 250 traders to Texas Live! in Arlington on 20 October. In 2022 he named live conferences as his long-term goal, and he got there. Off the desk, he supports and funds autism awareness initiatives. His channel sums up why it all matters: while you are learning, you need a squad that keeps your spirits up and helps you through the chop.
How Max trades
The 15-minute ORB, the Max way
The core setup is the opening range breakout. Max lets the first 15 minutes after the 9:30 am Eastern open print, marks the range with horizontal lines and waits for a candle to close outside it. A close above the range is a long, and a close below it is a short. In a June 2026 tastylive interview he described a method stripped down to three lines and candlesticks, with no indicators and no pre-market bias. He does not open his charts until two minutes before the bell, so each morning is a fresh reset.
Candles are the filter. Two recent webinars are devoted to reading them: one with WealthCharts in January 2026 on confirming ORB breakouts, and a MOT Blitz session in July. Together they have passed 100,000 views. He also teaches how to spot an ORB that is about to fail and take the reversal. Most of the work happens on NQ and MNQ, and The Maxstermind leans heavily on simple, rules-based NQ scalps.
Defence first, from options to funded accounts
Max came to futures by way of options. In his telling, he moved from profitable swing trading to selling premium full time, and The Maxstermind still includes more than nine hours on options selling and the wheel. He told tastylive that moving from big single-stock option plays to small put sales was the single biggest improvement of his career, a switch from offence to defence. The best traders, as he puts it, are always on defence.
Risk and psychology do the rest of the work. In his view, most traders fail on psychology and consistency rather than strategy. The Maxstermind puts risk management first, with lessons on position sizing, stop placement, daily loss limits and drawdown management. Much of his community trades prop-firm evaluations and funded accounts. As with every trader profiled here, the approach is described from his own material and is not a recommendation; futures trading involves substantial risk of loss.
See how the wider prop-trading field is positioned in NQ while you study a method like this: MarketFramework's Positioning Edge shows live long/short splits across ES, NQ, MES and MNQ from real evaluation and funded accounts, and Prop Backtest scores strategies against prop-firm rules.
Big Daddy Max's career timeline
Launches Max Options Trading as a Discord group in early 2020, with 50 subscribers on day one, just as COVID-19 reaches the United States. source
Publishes the free Big Daddy Max Beginner Course on options trading, still one of the channel’s most-watched uploads. source
Runs daily live trading sessions on YouTube and trades live at the Houston Trading Summit. source
Posts "Trading the 15 minute ORB the MAX way!" in May; it becomes his most-watched long-form video, now past 380,000 views. source
Launches the Traders and Haters podcast, releasing the first episode at the end of January. source
Hosts a free ORB webinar in February attended by more than 3,000 students in over 40 countries. source
Brings the community together in person for Live and Unfiltered in Hollywood, Florida, at the end of January. source
Announces MOT Blitz II, a free one-day event for 250 traders at Texas Live! in Arlington, set for 20 October. source
Big Daddy Max's videos
LATEST
Live Trading Futures - Power Hour Special - Friday
Live Trading Futures - 1300 with Logan - Friday
Learn How to Trade - Live Market Education - Friday
Live Trading Futures - The Big Daddy Morning Show - Friday
Live Trading Futures - London Highs - Friday
MOST POPULAR
Trading the 15 minute ORB the MAX way!
Everything You Need to Know About ORB and How I Use It - Webinar
Max Free ORB Webinar with over 3,000 attending students in 40+ countries!
Max's ORB strategy live Webinar - ORB STRATEGY - THE MOST SIMPLE WAY TO BE A PROFITABLE TRADER
Big Daddy Max Beginner Course - Learn to do Options Trading Without Prior Experience
SHORTS
Prop firms Max works with
All eight firms appear under "USE CODE: BDM" in the descriptions of his live streams in October 2026. Seven of them, plus the charting platform WealthCharts, are listed as partners of MOT Blitz II. His MOT indicators run on WealthCharts and TradingView.
We list a firm relationship only with dated public evidence from the last 30 days, re-checked each editorial pass.
BIG DADDY MAX: FREQUENTLY ASKED
What does Big Daddy Max trade?
He trades mostly Nasdaq-100 futures (NQ and the micro MNQ), with ES on screen as well. His core setup is the 15-minute opening range breakout at the 9:30 am Eastern open, confirmed with candlesticks rather than indicators. He started out selling options, and The Maxstermind still teaches options selling and the wheel.
Who is Big Daddy Max?
Big Daddy Max is the founder of Max Options Trading and the host of the Big Daddy Morning Show and the Traders and Haters podcast. A former US Army paratrooper, he was working in sales when he launched his trading community in early 2020. His website and Instagram name him as Max Anthony.
What is Max Options Trading?
Max Options Trading is his education company and live-show network. It runs a free Discord of nearly 79,000 members and up to six live futures shows a day on YouTube, from London Highs at 2:50 am Eastern to MOT Happy Hour in the evening. Alongside its courses, The Maxstermind and Futures One, it offers MOT indicators for WealthCharts and TradingView and coaching with Max or his team. It also runs in-person events, including the free MOT Blitz II in Arlington, Texas, on 20 October 2026.
What is Big Daddy Max’s net worth?
Big Daddy Max has not disclosed his net worth, and MarketFramework does not estimate net worth for the traders it profiles.
Which prop firm does Big Daddy Max use?
His live-stream descriptions in October 2026 carry code BDM for eight futures prop firms: Lucid Trading, Tradeify, MyFundedFutures, FundedNext, Midgard Trading, Take Profit Trader, Apex Trader Funding and Funded Futures Family. Seven of them are also partners of his MOT Blitz II event. Take Profit Trader chief executive James Sixsmith joined him on the Morning Show in March 2026.
SOURCES
- Max Options Trading: YouTube channelaccessed Oct 17, 2026
- Max Options Trading: Big Daddy Max author pageaccessed Oct 17, 2026
- Max Options Trading: courses (The Maxstermind, Futures One)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- YouTube, 16 October 2026 Big Daddy Morning Show (description with partner codes)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- Starter Story: Max Options Trading founder interview (2022)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- TradeZella: Max, inside the mind of a full-time trader (2023)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- tastylive: Max Anthony interview (2026)accessed Oct 17, 2026
- Tradeify TV: Funded, episode 7 (2026)accessed Oct 17, 2026
Are you Big Daddy Max? Update your profile or pick your featured video.