Why I Built StockGenie: I Kept Missing Trades While Working My Day Job

It was 2:47 PM on a Tuesday, and I was stuck in a meeting about Q3 projections.

My phone buzzed. NVDA had just broken through resistance—the exact setup I'd been watching for three days. I'd set an alert. I knew it was coming. But I couldn't do anything about it.

By the time the meeting ended at 3:30, the stock had already run 4.5%. My perfect entry was gone.

That moment—sitting there watching a great trade slip away while I pretended to care about PowerPoint slides—that's when I knew something had to change.

The Problem Nobody Talks About

If you're reading this, you probably know the feeling. You're trying to trade while having a real life.

Maybe you're at your 9-to-5. Maybe you're a parent juggling kids and carpool. Maybe you just don't want to spend every waking moment glued to charts.

The market doesn't care. It moves when it moves. And if you're not watching at that exact moment? You miss it.

I tried everything to solve this:

Multiple browser tabs open all day: Six different charts, three alert apps, charting platforms, my broker. My laptop sounded like it was preparing for takeoff. My battery lasted about 90 minutes. And I still missed signals because I was, you know, actually working.

Setting price alerts on every app: My broker, my trading app, my charting platform. I'd get 30 notifications a day. "AAPL crossed $180!" Great, but that doesn't tell me if I should actually buy. Half the alerts were noise. The other half required me to do 10 minutes of analysis to figure out if it was real.

Expensive professional platforms: The ones built for full-time traders? $200-300/month. Powerful features, sure. But at that price, I needed to make an extra $3,000/year just to break even. As someone still learning to trade consistently? That math didn't work.

Wake up at 4 AM: I live on the West Coast. I actually tried setting my alarm for market open (6:30 AM Pacific). Lasted two weeks before I realized I was turning into a zombie. My wife wasn't thrilled either.

None of it worked. Because the real problem wasn't the tools—it was that the tools required me to be present.

The "Aha" Moment (Or: When I Finally Got It)

The breakthrough came six months later. I'd just started using ChatGPT for work stuff—writing emails, debugging code, that kind of thing.

One day, out of curiosity, I asked it: "Explain VWAP to me like I'm five."

The response was… actually good. Better than the 2,000-word articles I'd been reading. It knew I was a beginner. It gave me exactly what I needed, nothing more.

That's when it clicked: What if AI could do this for my trading?

Not replace me. Not make decisions for me. But handle the grunt work:

• Watch my stocks when I can't
• Explain what's happening in plain English
• Tell me when something actually matters
• Help me understand WHY a signal triggered

Basically: be the trading buddy I wish I had. Someone who's always watching, never sleeps, and doesn't judge me for asking "dumb" questions.

Building the Thing I Wished Existed

I'm a software engineer by trade (hence being stuck in those meetings). I knew how to code. I knew how to work with APIs. I'd been trading for three years—long enough to know what I needed, short enough to remember what confused me as a beginner.

So I started building.

The first version was embarrassingly simple: A Python script that checked VWAP every 5 minutes and sent me a text if it crossed. That's it. But even that tiny thing worked better than the complex alert setups I'd tried before. Because it ran while I was in meetings.

Then I added more indicators. Then I made it explain what it saw. Then I connected an AI assistant to help me create rules in natural language instead of configuring complex parameters.

"Watch AAPL for uptrends" became a complete technical setup—VWAP + moving averages + volume filters—without me touching a single dropdown menu.

Six months in, I had something that actually worked. Not just for me, but potentially for anyone else dealing with the same problem.

What Makes StockGenie Different (And What Doesn't)

Here's what I learned building this:

Most trading platforms optimize for professional day traders. Makes sense—that's who spends $200+/month. But that's maybe 2% of people interested in trading. The other 98% of us have jobs, families, lives. We need different tools.

StockGenie is built for that 98%:

1. It monitors offline. Your watchlist keeps running even when you're logged out. Even when you close your laptop. Even when you're sleeping. The AI watches for you.

2. It validates before you act. You get an alert. Before you jump into a trade, you can ask: "Should I buy NVDA right now?" The AI knows your positions, knows your rules, knows the current market context. It'll tell you if it's a good entry or if you should wait.

3. It teaches while it alerts. Every signal comes with an explanation. "VWAP crossed above price on above-average volume, confirming uptrend." You're not just following instructions—you're learning WHY the signal matters.

4. It's actually affordable. $19/month for unlimited monitoring and analysis. Because I remember what it felt like to pay $200+/month for professional tools and wonder if I'd ever make it back.

What StockGenie Isn't (Being Honest Here)

I could tell you StockGenie will make you rich. That our AI has some secret algorithm that beats the market. That you'll quit your day job in six months.

That would be bullshit.

Here's the truth:

• The AI can't predict the future. It's analyzing technical indicators and fundamentals. Same data everyone has. It's just faster and explains it better.

• You still need to learn. StockGenie helps you learn faster, but there's no shortcut to experience. You're going to make mistakes. (I still do.)

• It won't work for everyone. If you're a high-frequency day trader doing 50 trades a day, you probably need more specialized tools. We're built for people doing 5-15 trades a week while working full-time.

• The technology isn't perfect. Sometimes the AI makes weird connections. Sometimes it misses nuance. We're constantly improving, but it's not magic.

What it IS: A tool that handles the boring, repetitive monitoring work so you can focus on making good decisions with the time you actually have.

The Vision: Making Smart Trading Accessible

The goal isn't to replace human judgment. It's to make human judgment better.

Computers are good at: never sleeping, processing data instantly, never forgetting to check, watching dozens of stocks simultaneously.

Humans are good at: pattern recognition, risk assessment, knowing when something feels off, adapting to new situations.

StockGenie handles the first part so you can focus on the second. That's it. That's the whole vision. And perhaps someday we figure out the secret sauce :)

An Invitation

If this resonates with you—if you've ever missed a trade because you were in a meeting, or felt overwhelmed trying to watch 10 stocks at once, or paid too much for tools that required a PhD to use—I'd love for you to try StockGenie.

We have a free tier (Explorer) that gives you 12 full AI analyses per month. No credit card. No commitment. Just try it and see if it solves the same problems it solved for me.

And if it doesn't work for you? That's okay too. Seriously. Different traders need different tools. But if you try it and have feedback—what's confusing, what's missing, what actually helps—please tell me. This is still very much a work in progress, and it gets better when people tell me what sucks.

I built StockGenie because I got tired of missing trades while living my life. If you're in the same boat, maybe it'll help you too.

— The StockGenie Team