From Minnow to Whale: The Moby Tick Story

Everyone must start somewhere, but the clock starts ticking from the minute you put your first foot forward. Back in 2016, I became disgusted with how much tax I was paying as an employee. Looking at my pay stub was disheartening. I understood that I was living the life that I was willing to accept, until I wasn’t. Something had to change. I started reading books and educating myself on the general market and trading. TMI was the understatement of the century!

Like many beginners, I bought software, subscribed to newsletters, and jumped in with both feet. As anyone can imagine, I got stung; both as a newbie and by emotional pain. We’ve all been there. It was great at first as I made 30% of my investment back in the first 60 days and I was thrilled. Day trading wiped me out, at least faster than it would have buying and holding. There was something about the market that didn’t make sense to me.

News anchors are all bullish, but the market goes down. Bearish news and the market goes up. Great earnings, the stock tanks or bad earnings and the stock goes up. Skullduggery or tomfoolery, you choose, but that’s all I’m offering for options. By the way, how can analysts and news anchors keep their jobs when they’re wrong all the time? I thought that since I was new and knew very little, this information would be helpful. It only complicated things.

I’m a perfectionist which can be a blessing and a curse, especially for traders. I needed to know why something happened and everyone had an opinion. My P&L had some choice words, in its opinion too.

The bank that I was trading through had educational webinars, which were marginally helpful in understanding technical analysis but still, I was missing something. One webinar featured Stephanie Kammerman aka The Stock Whisperer. I was intrigued by her presentation and wanted to learn more. She had been very successful in the market for over 20 years, carried herself very well and spoke with a sense of wisdom that I hadn’t seen in anyone else. She operated a trading room called the Java Pit with a small fee for a 30-day trial.

My first day in the Java Pit, I will never forget. I was red pilled instantly and a light bulb went off in my mind. Stephanie said that we do not follow the news, we follow the prints: the large institutional trades that are executed in alternative exchanges in values of millions, hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. When I asked why we don’t follow the news, she asked: “Who is going to take the other side of the trade? You?” It clicked! “The prints always come first and the tape doesn’t lie.”

When I first saw the Block Trade Indicator, I lost my mind. 50,000 shares on Bank of America! I was calling out everything. Stefanie pulled me aside and said: “Tell me when there are 400,000 shares or higher, then I’ll be interested.” That moment taught me about scale and significance in institutional trading.

I fit right in. The Java Pit became my new home and its members, my new family. Since it’s an educational room, everyone supported each other. Traders would work together to note down big trades and we would come up with trading plans to profit from unexpected big moves.

In the fall of 2018, a power couple: Laura and Bruce, and Laurie and Phil worked together to write a block trade scanner that gathered trades on about 300 stocks and shared it within the Pit in a spreadsheet. This was phenomenal! No one missed anything. It was so helpful that we realized how many potential trades we were missing. Seeing how much the market was manipulated was a game changer and being able to profit from it, was astonishing.

The Minnow

I had some Excel programming experience and wanted to give back to the village that had raised this trader. “The Project” was born. It was a funny, ominous name as the name “dark pool.” This grew over the next three years and anyone that was a Java Pit member could use it. One click to see all the trades for any tracked stock since May of 2018. It would even map out day trades for you using Stephanie’s principles and had live interactive watchlists. Pretty good for an Excel project.

The Shark

“The Project” was rebranded as Remora in 2021 with ever expanding features and first offered as a paid subscription. This grew to offering another version named Remora Lite as: “What happens in the Pit, stays in the Pit.” This was to protect some trade secrets.

The need to Adapt

There were a couple of catalysts fueling the need to redevelop Remora. First off, Charles Schwab announced that they were removing their Block Trade Indicator from their platform, meaning there would be no more block trades. We needed to account for this. Also, the use of Excel was not the best choice for a distributed application. The clock was ticking.

I started coding Moby Tick in February 2023. Although I didn’t know the required programming language, I worked day and night getting the server coding working. Several very close friends were chasing me to get a move on. I needed to do this myself to keep costs down, being a one-man band. Several investors came forward and Moby’s next chapter started.

Hiring people is always difficult. I expected the same work ethic as I had, especially if you work for yourself. The initial hire was to deliver the front end in 45 days. This turned to 120 days then not at all. The second hire was a company with many employees. I figured having several programmers working under a lead, the project would be completed quickly. This again cost 90 days before they were fired as well. I turned to direct hires, which cost more time. Eventually, I felt that all was almost lost. In the eleventh hour, the heavens parted as an executive from a previous job I held helped to find a brilliant programmer who turned everything around and in record time.

The Whale

Moby Tick launched in September 2024 and there was much rejoicing! The support from the trading community was and is overwhelming. Being able to give back to my trading family and community was the highlight of the year. It’s scary to step out into the unknown. Phase 1, the release, was complete but now, I needed to make it better, add new features quickly and throw myself deeper into the void of entrepreneurship. Is it really fear or excitement? I suspect that is a matter of perspective as both fear and excitement can have similar physiological effects on the body. For peace of mind, I chose excitement.

In its few short months since launch, Moby Tick has grown beyond the expectations of those supporting me throughout this process. I aim to give back to the community as much as I can by developing a product that “gives you the best possible trade setups in as few clicks as possible.”

Moby has already become something great with much more planned down the road as we add new features, listen to feedback and deliver to the trading community something that cuts out all the noise, summarizes data quickly and allows everyone to get back to doing what matters most: living a great life.

Sharing this story is a tip of the hat to all who have believed in me, my trading family, friends and investors. We continue to grow together, trade together, love and laugh together.

Come join us at MobyTickTrading.com

The adventure continues…

Dave Barnhart Founder, Moby Tick Trading