TRADER DOSSIER — Papa G / "The 10-Minute Trader"

Single source of truth for this trader. Same 4-part shape as the TJ WheelDeal dossier, built for direct comparison. Handle: @jamesagaudinosr.4327 on YouTube (real name James A. Gaudino Sr., goes by "Papa G" on stream). Channel runs two recurring shows: "Dividend Stock Talk" and "The 10-Minute Trader is live!" — both the same strategy, same host, same nightly format. Live Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 8:00 PM Eastern, simulcast on 13 platforms. Also runs a paid live trading group ("this morning, we went through three accounts in less than 18 minutes"). Retired — describes this as his income, not a side hobby. Last updated: 2026-08-16.

Not financial advice. This documents what one public trader says he does, reconstructed from his own on-air words. He runs a paid community and streams across 13 platforms, both of which reward activity and the appearance of a working system. Treat every % figure as self-reported and unaudited. Verify everything before risking capital.

⚠️ Coverage note — this is a partial pass, not the full channel

This channel has 1,651 livestreams plus 117 short recap videos — over 20× the size of the TJ WheelDeal catalog. Transcripts are still downloading in the background at the time this was written (196 of ~1,768 pulled, item 104 of 1,651 streams in progress). What follows is built from the highest rule-density transcripts mined so far (ranked by mine.py --dir transcripts_jamesgaudino), cross-checked across multiple independent episodes for consistency. The core rules below repeat nearly verbatim across every stream sampled — this is a fixed, scripted opening he runs every night, not something assembled from a handful of lucky quotes. Confidence in the core SOP is high. Confidence in full portfolio/journal coverage is low — see Part II.

⚡ THE PLAYBOOK — run the strategy in 5 steps

The whole thing in one line

Only buy dividend-paying stocks you'd hold forever → sell a covered call every single week for ≥1% of the position → never sell the stock at a loss, just keep collecting weekly premium → if assigned, that's a win, repeat.

STEP 1 — Screen the stock (all must pass)

Gate	Rule
Would you hold it long-term?	"Long term" = 30 days minimum, in his words. If no, skip it entirely
Consistently profitable?	Proxy he uses: is the dividend consistently increasing? Rising dividend = profitable. Falling dividend = losing money
Price ceiling	Avoids expensive names — explicitly rejects stocks priced in the hundreds-to-thousands per share ("I don't do stocks over 400 bucks," rejects a $990 and a $1,200+ example on air)
Not a falling knife	Rejects a stock that's down big even if "cheap" relative to its own history (example: a name down from $2,400 to $1,000 in a month — "no thank you")
Not at a fresh high either	Explicitly avoids buying at the yearly high — "buy low, sell high," never "buy high and wait for higher"

STEP 2 — The 2-4 second chart scan (no indicators, no Greeks)

Five things, read off a 1-year chart in his words "it takes me two to four seconds to see all five":

High (of the year)
Low (of the year)
Where was it a year ago
Where is it right now
What is the motion — where is the money flowing (up/down momentum)

Wants the stock bouncing off the bottom, not still falling, and not sitting at the top. A separate segment uses a 30-day high / 30-day bottom version of the same idea — treat these as the same visual method at two different lookback windows, not two different systems.

STEP 3 — Price the weekly covered call

Weekly options only. No monthlies, no LEAPS on this side of the strategy.
Pull the option chain, pick a strike, and run the math live, on a calculator, every single pick: premium collected ÷ share cost (or total cost of the trade including commissions/fees) = weekly % return.
Target: ≥1% per week on capital. Stated repeatedly and explicitly as over 50% annualized — he pre-empts the skepticism every episode ("nobody gets 50% a year, I've heard it before, I'm not getting 50% a year, I'm getting 1% every week").
Worked example, verbatim math shown on stream: $180 premium ÷ $47.90 share price = 3.7% for the week.

STEP 4 — Deploy capital, hold the shares

No fixed per-position % cap disclosed. His own description of sizing: "I look at them until I run out of money. Once I run out of money…" — he works down his ranked list of the day's qualifying picks (usually 5–10 meet criteria on an average week) and sizes into as many as capital allows.
Never sell the stock at a loss. If it drops, he holds it and keeps selling calls against it rather than realizing the loss.
If the shares get called away (assigned), that's a completed win — restart the screen for a new position.

STEP 5 — Daily review ritual

Five questions, every morning, opening the account:

"What did I buy? What did I sell? Where is it? Where's it going? What should I do?"

🔁 The second, separate strategy: dividend capture

He runs a distinct side-system he calls "Dividends on Steroids" and "Double Dividends" — not the weekly covered-call income play, a different trade entirely:

Enter 10 days before the ex-dividend date. Reasoning given: that gives time for other dividend-capture investors to bid the stock up as the date approaches.
Exit for a profit (dividend + a small price gain) once that bid-up happens — doesn't need to hold through the ex-date itself.
Claims roughly 97% win rate on this pattern, checked against a "seasonality" tool/software he references but doesn't name on air.
Worst case: he just holds the shares long-term and collects the dividend yield as consolation (his own example: Nike, citing a 1.13% yield as "still better than the CDs the banks are offering").

🔁 Scenario quick-reference

If this happens…	…do this
Stock qualifies (profitable, right price, right chart shape)	Sell the weekly covered call, target ≥1%
Stock drops after you own it	Hold. Never sell at a loss. Keep selling calls against it
Stock gets called away	Win. Screen for the next position
Stock is at its yearly high	Skip it — he never buys strength
Stock is in freefall, even if "cheap" now	Skip it — not a bounce, a falling knife
Stock costs $400+/share	Skip it on price alone
10 days out from an ex-dividend date on a name you like	Consider the dividend-capture side-play instead of/alongside the weekly call
Someone asks about cash-secured puts	He says he trades them personally but won't teach the mechanics publicly — reserved content
Someone asks about delta/theta/Greeks	He explicitly refuses — "the Greeks got nothing to do with it," uses the chart method instead

PART I — STRATEGY SOP (what he says he does)

0. Philosophy — "it's kind of like Monopoly"

🟢 Multiple episodes, near-identical wording.

"I'm looking for a simple, safe, predictable, consistent 1% per week. Now, 1% a week does come to over 50% a year. And yes, I've heard it over and over and over again. Nobody gets 50% a year. I know. I've heard it. You don't need to tell me no one gets 50% a year. I've heard it before."

The repeating-cycle framing, stated explicitly as a metaphor for the weekly premium-collection loop:

"This is a game once you learn the rules. It's kind of like Monopoly. Four green houses, one red hotel. Round and round you go. Stay away from jail, collect $200."

0a. 🟢 The 5 core rules (his fixed on-air script, quoted in full)

Repeated almost word-for-word across independent episodes — this is a memorized/scripted intro, not an off-the-cuff answer, which is exactly why it's trustworthy as his actual stated method:

"Never buy anything you do not want to hold on to long term. Okay? Remember that — love, honor, obey till death do your part. Think of it the same way about your stocks. Rule number two, never sell at a loss. It defeats the purpose of the game. Rule three, make sure the company's consistently profitable. Rule four, weekly options only. And then rule five, make sure all the numbers are working in your favor."

And separately, on what "long term" actually means for him:

"What's long term for you? Long term for me is 30 days. One month, 30 days. That's long term for me. I'm already retired."

PORTFOLIO0b. 🟢 Position sizing math, stated in dollars

"1% on the whole portfolio per week… if my portfolio has $50,000 in it, I want $500 a week. If I have a $100,000 account, 1% every week is $1,000 a week."

0c. 🟢 Deployment rule — capital-limited, not count-limited

"On an average week, I'd say about five to 10 [positions meet my criteria]. I don't look at every single one that fits. I look at them until I run out of money. Once I run out of money, [I stop]."

No stated max position count or per-position cap — sizing is simply "keep buying qualifying names until capital is gone."

MANAGE0d. 🟢 Profitability proxy — dividend trend as the whole test

"So do the dividends. If the dividends [are] consistently increasing, that means they're consistently profitable. If the dividends are going down, that means they're losing money. It's actually that simple."

ENTER0e. 🔴 Explicit refusal to teach Greeks or cash-secured puts publicly

Answering a viewer's direct question about delta, rolling, profit-taking %, other Greeks, and CSPs:

"Cash secured puts. Yes, I do them, but I'm not going to teach them here. I'm already giving you something for free. I have to draw the line somewhere. Now, when it comes to the Greeks — the alpha, the beta, the vega, the theta, the rho, all that kind of stuff — I don't even bother with them.… For the strategy here, covered calls, the Greeks got nothing to do with it. I look at simplicity."

⚠️ Tagged 🔴 not because it's a guest speaking (no co-host identified in the transcripts sampled so far), but because it's a deliberate content gate — he is telling you outright that part of his real method (CSPs, and whatever role Greeks actually play for him in practice) is withheld from the free audience. Anything about his CSP approach in this dossier would be speculation; there isn't any, by his own statement.

ENTER1. Entry mechanics — consolidated

Setting	Value	Source confidence
Underlying type	Dividend-paying, consistently profitable stock	🟢
Holding intent	Must be willing to hold 30+ days minimum	🟢
Price ceiling	Roughly avoid $400+/share names	🟢
Chart check	1-yr high/low, 1-yr-ago price, current price, momentum — 2–4 second scan	🟢
Entry shape	Bouncing off the low, not still falling, not at the high	🟢
Option type	Weekly covered calls only	🟢
Target return	≥1% of capital per week	🟢
Sizing	Deploy sequentially into ranked candidates until capital runs out	🟢

2. Exit / defense rules

Situation	Rule
Stock drops after entry	Never sell at a loss. Hold and keep selling calls against it
Stock called away	Counted as a win, not an exit to defend
No stated stop-loss	None found across the material mined so far
Stock has dropped, want to keep selling calls	Move further out of the money in strike, not roll — see §2a below. This is his actual defense mechanic

ENTER2a. 🟢 The real defense mechanic: push the strike further OTM, don't roll

🟢 Confirmed near-verbatim across two independent episodes (bknHNkMDp1U, RCczH2kSzWM) — this fills a gap flagged in the first pass of this dossier ("no stated rolling mechanics found"). He doesn't roll the option. As the stock drops, he simply sells the same-week call further out of the money, accepting a lower % return rather than not collecting premium at all:

"If Gap continues to increase its dividends, which is what we're looking for — but the byproduct is collecting this premium every week. At the money it's $1.02, which is over 4%. One strike out of the money is 75 cents, which is 3%. Three strikes out of the money is 54 cents, that's 2%… five strikes out of the money is 29 cents — still 1%, but five strikes out."

"Half a percent every single week is still 26% per year. Owning the stock, even when the stock drops — if I sell three strikes out of the money, I'm still picking up half a percent… not my goal, but still."

Strikes OTM	Return (worked example)
At the money	~4%
1 strike OTM	~3%
3 strikes OTM	~2% (his stated floor: "still over 26%/yr")
5 strikes OTM	~1%

Practical read: his stated ≥1% weekly target has an implicit floor around 0.5%/week (≈26% annualized) before he'd consider the trade no longer worth it — everything between 1 strike and roughly 5 strikes OTM is treated as an acceptable range depending on how far the stock has fallen.

2b. 🟢 Why he insists on selling fresh every Monday — theta decay math

"If I buy [McDonald's] at the current price, sell it at the exact same price, I'm getting 1.4% for 4 days. Monday's gone. I lost 20% of the possible income I could have gotten. A dividend stock option has theta decay — as the days go by, the time value slowly decreases. If I sell an option on a Monday, I've got 5 days: 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%, 20%. That's 100% of the time value from Monday morning to Friday afternoon. Well, Monday's gone — I just lost 20%."

This is the actual reasoning behind "weekly options only, sold fresh each week" — missing the Monday entry means permanently forfeiting one-fifth of that week's total theta capture.

2c. 🟢 Compounding math, stated explicitly

"1% every single week... that's over 50% by the end of the year. Compounded, it's 64%."

He also states the same target a second way in a different episode:

"Averaged 5% a month. 5% a month is over 60% by the end of the year."

(≈1.15%/week — consistent with, not contradicting, the primary 1%/week claim.)

3. The dividend-capture side-strategy — detail

🟢 1yZ7wV-Lids

"These two strategies here — dividends on steroids and double dividends — both look to get in at the opening of the day 10 days prior to the ex-date. This strategy here, it's a great fallback strategy… can I collect the dividend, get out with a profit, and then move on to the next [one]? Yeah, 97% of the time… I love that number."

"Worst case scenario I get to hold on to [it]. [Nike] is a great company, they've been around for years… the absolute worst-case scenario I hold on to it and I collect a 1.13% yield, which is still better than the CDs the banks are offering."

Why 10 days, in his own words: "It gives more time for the stock to make the movement based on other investors coming in to capture that dividend." — i.e. he's trying to front-run the dividend-capture crowd's own buying pressure.

EVIDENCE4. Vocabulary / concept decoder

Term	Meaning
"The numbers work"	Weekly premium ÷ cost of the position clears his ≥1% bar
"Long term" (his usage)	30 days — not years. A much looser bar than the phrase implies
"Bouncing off the bottom"	Price near its 1-yr or 30-day low but turning up, not still falling
"Dividends on Steroids" / "Double Dividends"	His two dividend-capture variants, entered 10 days pre-ex-date
5 daily questions	What did I buy / sell / where is it / where's it going / what should I do
"Run out of money"	His stated sizing limit — no other disclosed position cap

🔍 AUDIT — an independent read on this strategy

My assessment, not his.

What's genuinely good about it

Strength	Why it holds up
Defined, capped risk	This is covered calls against shares he actually owns, not naked/uncapped short options. Structurally much lower blast-radius than a strategy that includes naked calls
Extremely simple, teachable, repeatable	5 rules, a 5-point visual chart scan, one calculator formula. A beginner could actually execute this without options-Greeks literacy
Consistent messaging	The core script repeats near-verbatim across independent episodes — this is a real fixed system, not improvised differently each night
Reasonable rejection filters	Skips falling knives, skips buying at highs, skips overpriced names — sensible guardrails even if simplistic
Daily review ritual	Five fixed questions every morning is a legitimate habit, forces regular position review
Explicit content boundary	Rather than fudging an explanation of CSPs/Greeks he doesn't want to teach for free, he says so plainly — more honest than pretending to cover everything

What concerns me

Risk	The problem
🚨 "Never sell at a loss" is an accounting trick, not a risk control	A stock can still crater 50%+ in unrealized terms — he just won't call it a loss because he never closes it. Structurally the same flaw as TJ's "roll till I'm right" — the loss doesn't disappear, it just stays unrealized and unreported
🚨 No stop-loss, no max drawdown rule, no diversification cap	"Deploy until I run out of money" with no per-position % limit is a real concentration-risk gap. Nothing here prevents one bad name from dominating the account
1%/week target is repeatedly asserted, never proven	He preempts the "nobody gets 50% a year" objection on every episode but never shows account-level, audited performance to answer it — he just restates the claim
Dividend trend as the sole profitability test is thin	Rising dividend is a lagging, backward-looking signal. Plenty of companies raised dividends right up until they cut them. It's a heuristic, not due diligence
The public SOP is incomplete by his own admission	He explicitly withholds CSP mechanics and downplays the role of Greeks "for the strategy here" — someone copying only the free content is missing a piece he says he personally uses
Monetization incentive	Paid live trading group + 13-platform simulcast. Same structural conflict as TJ: he's rewarded for activity and for looking successful on camera, not for disclosing losses
Weekly-options-only requirement can push toward less "safe" names	Not every steady dividend payer has a liquid weekly chain paying ≥1%. Chasing that yield weekly could quietly bias picks toward more volatile names than the "boring dividend stock" branding implies
97% dividend-capture win rate is self-reported	Referenced against an unnamed "seasonality" tool, no methodology or sample size shown

Things to consider before copying any of it

This is lower-risk than TJ's playbook by construction — covered calls on owned shares, no naked exposure. If you're choosing between the two systems, the risk floor is meaningfully different.
The "never sell at a loss" rule needs a real substitute before you use it. Decide your own mark-to-market drawdown limit — don't just adopt "I'll hold it forever" as a substitute for an actual risk plan.
He is not teaching you his whole method. His CSP approach and his real use of the Greeks (if any) are explicitly reserved for the paid group. Budget for that gap.
Verify the weekly-chain liquidity requirement doesn't push you into names you wouldn't otherwise hold. The strategy's engine (weekly options) can quietly override the stated stock-picking philosophy (safe, boring dividend payers).
Track your own realized vs. unrealized P&L separately — his framing makes it easy to conflate "I haven't sold" with "I haven't lost."

Bottom line

Structurally safer than the TJ WheelDeal system (no naked calls, no leverage discussed, positions are fully covered by owned shares) and far simpler to execute, which is a real strength for a retail trader. The tradeoff is the same category of self-deception risk around losses (unrealized ≠ not-a-loss), an unverified return claim repeated on a loop, and a strategy that's explicitly incomplete in its free form. Good candidate for a lower-risk column in a side-by-side comparison against TJ.

PART II — EVIDENCE & POSITION RECORD (what he actually said on air)

⚠️ What this section is, and isn't

Unlike the TJ dossier, most of the dollar examples found so far are live teaching walkthroughs on the day's candidate list — phrased generically ("first on the list… one covered call… the strike, the premium is…") rather than first-person confirmations of trades he actually placed. Where a segment is a clear first-person confirmed trade, it's marked [CONFIRMED]. Where it's a worked example on a candidate stock without a clear "I did this" statement, it's marked [WORKED EXAMPLE]. Treat the confirmed row as the only verified journal entry so far.

EVIDENCE[CONFIRMED] — the one clear closed-trade record found

🟢 c8edL08-s2c

"The first week we bought — that's the call spread, the 50, the 52, 52½ call spread — and we made about $1,100, $1,200 the first week. Second week we made $2,100 for selling the 53 call."

Week	Structure	Result
1	Call spread, 50/52.5	+$1,100–1,200
2	Sold the 53 call	+$2,100

[CONFIRMED] — first-person admitted loss, in his own words

🟢 RCczH2kSzWM, answering a caller asking about commodities:

"I lost my ass on commodities in the past but would like to diversify."

Followed immediately by a blunt admission that risk-management ignorance was the cause, when a caller admitted not knowing the Commitment of Traders report:

"Well, then you deserve to lose, brother."

🟢 Scale confirmed in his own words

"I have over 2,000 videos on YouTube. All saying the exact same thing."

(Consistent with — slightly higher than — the ~1,768 total estimated from the channel scrape used to build this dossier.)

[WORKED EXAMPLES] — live picks/calculations, not confirmed as his positions

Ticker (as named)	Structure	Numbers shown
Lockheed Martin	Weekly covered call, 520 strike	Premium quoted at $1,300/contract on a ~$500 stock
"Google" (name as spoken)	Weekly covered call, 360 strike	$515 premium quoted, ~$300 stock price as spoken
MARA	Weekly covered call, 13 strike	$42 premium quoted
Unnamed $47.90 stock	Weekly covered call, premium $180	3.7% for the week, walked through live on a calculator
Hertz (HTZ)	Weekly covered call	6.8% for the week, $16/contract net after a $30-cent-per-share reduction
Nike	Dividend-capture, worst case	1.13% dividend yield cited as the floor outcome

EVIDENCEDaily "top 5" picks captured (recap-video format, `videos` tab)

Example night, verbatim: "CLS 4.2%. CAS 1.9%. EOG 1.5%. RILY 4.3%. HTZ 6.8% for one week." This format repeats nightly — every recap video is a fresh 5-name list with the same structure, meaning the trade-journal potential here is large if the full 117-video series and 1,651-stream backlog get mined completely — but that hasn't happened yet (see coverage note at top).

Disclosed account detail

"I got six positions" (stated on a specific morning review, 2MbqSjgxF04)

No broker screenshot or full portfolio snapshot found yet in the material sampled — unlike TJ, who posted broker screenshots on X. James's channel is YouTube-only in what's been checked so far; an X/Twitter account for this trader has not yet been searched.

🌐 Other platforms found (no X/Twitter located)

A search turned up no X/Twitter account for James Gaudino or "Papa G" — this appears to be a YouTube/Instagram-first operation, unlike TJ. What was found instead:

Platform	Detail
Instagram	`@the_10_minute_trader`
TikTok	`@dividendstocktalk`
Patreon	`patreon.com/dividendstocktalk` — "Dividend Stock Talk, an affiliate of The 10 Minute Trader" — his paid membership tier
Apple Podcasts	"Dividend Stock Talk"
Kindle books (Amazon, author "Gaudino Sr., James A")	Dividend Kings, Trading with Dividends, and — notably — Dividends On Steroids
Company site	gaudinoenterprises.com
LinkedIn	Lists him as "Co-founder — The 10 Minute Trader" (page itself didn't load for detail, but the co-founder title is confirmed via search — there is apparently a second, un-identified co-founder)

"Dividends On Steroids" being a published Kindle title (not just a stream segment name) is a real corroboration — it confirms this is a long-developed, named strategy with actual written material behind it, not something improvised for the camera. Worth reading directly if deeper mechanics are wanted.

Company bio (gaudinoenterprises.com) describes him only as someone who "has spent years refining dividend-based trading strategies" — no formal credentials, licenses, or verifiable track record listed.

Open items / not yet covered

Full 1,651-stream backlog — only a fraction mined so far. The daily "top 5" format means this channel likely has the richest potential trade journal of any trader in this project, once fully processed.
CSP mechanics and real Greek usage — explicitly withheld from free content; would require finding paid-group material, which is out of scope for a public-transcript pipeline.
Account size / real dollar figures — every % example so far is hypothetical or illustrative ("if your portfolio has $50,000…"), not tied to a disclosed real account value.