Dr. Jonathan Weinkle talks with Jeff Seckinger, founder of NURP, about financial wellbeing for doctors, algorithmic trading strategies, capital preservation, investor autonomy, and how greater financial freedom can reduce burnout and support values-driven medicine.
This episode is sponsored by NURP
NURP helps busy physicians grow their wealth through AI-powered algorithmic trading designed for demanding careers. No day trading, no guesswork, and no constant market watching required.
Ready to put your money to work? Visit start.nurp.com/doctors to learn more.
Trading involves risk, and results may vary. This is not financial advice.
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What does financial freedom mean for physicians, especially those in lower-paying fields like primary care, and how can it protect against burnout and moral injury?
In this sponsored episode of Healing People, Not Patients, Dr. Jonathan Winkle welcomes Jeff Seckinger, founder of NURP (and previously Zero Percent and Orca Capital). They explore why many doctors feel trapped by financial pressures, the limitations of traditional financial advice for high-earning professionals, and how algorithmic trading tools can offer autonomy, diversification, and supplemental income without handing over custody of capital.
Jeff explains the differences between investing and trading, the power of institutional-grade algorithms (inspired by funds like the Medallion Fund), capital preservation, verified performance through third-party platforms like MyFXBook, and practical risk management tools such as equity monitors and adjustable position sizing. The conversation addresses concentration risk, liquidity, alternatives investing, and why autonomy over one’s finances supports the ability to practice medicine with integrity.
Complete with full disclaimers, a demo account option for testing, and transparent discussion of drawdowns, this episode invites physicians to thoughtfully explore tools that can create margin for their mission.
Top 3 Takeaways
About the Show
Healing People, Not Patients explores ways to enhance medical practice by infusing it with compassion, humanity, and a deeper sense of purpose, aiming to help healthcare professionals rediscover the "soul" of their work. Framed around the four questions of the Passover Seder, it probes how to transform medicine for the better, promoting an empathetic and supportive approach that empowers patients to create meaningful, sober lives, while drawing on Jewish teachings about community and friendship.
"Our theme song, 'Room for the Soul,' is available on Bandcamp at https://jonathanweinkle.bandcamp.com/track/room-for-the-soul."
About the Guest
Jeff Seckinger is the founder of NURP, a company that licenses algorithmic trading strategies to individual investors. He previously founded Zero Percent (financial education) and Orca Capital (digital asset hedge fund). His mission is to democratize access to advanced trading technology, helping individuals, especially those not yet accredited, achieve greater financial freedom and autonomy without surrendering custody of their capital.
Visit start.nurp.com/doctors for the demo account and more information.
About the Host:
Dr. Jonathan Weinkle is an internist and pediatrician who practices primary care at a community health center in Pittsburgh. He strives to be a "nice Jewish doctor" focused on patient-centered healthcare, emphasizing effective communication and holistic well-being.
He teaches the courses, “Death and the Healthcare Professions” and “Healing and Humanity” at the University of Pittsburgh, authored the books Healing People, Not Patients and Illness to Exodus, and runs ‘Healers Who Listen’, where he blogs on healing and Jewish tradition. Once an aspiring rabbi, he now integrates faith and medicine to support other physicians and his own patients.
🌐 Website: healerswholisten.com
🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonathan-weinkle-3440032a
📸 Instagram: @HealersWhoListen
📘 Facebook: @JonathanWeinkle
[00:00:00] Welcome back to Healing People, Not Patients. I'm Dr. Jonathan Winkle. This show is built on a simple, stubborn idea: medicine is a relationship, not a transaction. We care for people best when we treat them as people. So you might be surprised by today's topic, money. But the truth most of us don't say out loud is that a physician who's financially exhausted, trapped, or afraid isn't free to practice the kind of medicine they believe in.
Financial precariousness is one of the quiet engines of burnout and moral injury, especially for doctors like me who choose to specialize in a lower-paying primary care field. The difference in income between that and a better-paying specialty can be so stark that medical students with high debt burdens often rule out primary care even before they really think about what they want to do.
Can be so stark, in fact, that might keep somebody who's a first-generation aspiring doctor out of the field [00:01:00] altogether. Autonomy over your finances can be, in a real sense, autonomy over your calling. There's a saying in the nonprofit world, "No margin, no mission." It fits for organizations, but it's equally true for private individuals.
A doctor who has to depend on their career for their entire livelihood might be stuck providing volume-based care that doesn't leave room for relationships. They might be stuck charting in their pajamas, and they might be stuck providing care that they know is wrong because of how it's incentivized to promote particular treatments over the well-being of the patient.
Having a little bit more financial freedom can give us the ability to say no to the wrong job, the wrong environment, or just something that's plain wrong
[00:00:00] Welcome back to Healing People Not Patients. I'm Dr. Jonathan Winkle.
My guest for today's conversation is Jeff Seckinger, founder of Nirp, an algorithmic trading company with a fantastic name.
Jeff's built three companies in finance: Zero Percent, which is in financial education, Orca Capital, a digital asset hedge fund for accredited investors, and Nirp, which licenses that strategy directly to individuals like you and me. Full disclosure, this is a sponsored episode and Nirp is a partner. I agreed to it because I think the conversation about physician financial wellbeing is worth having.
Also, a disclaimer. Nirp is a software and financial education company, not your financial advisor. Nothing we discuss is financial advice. It's an invitation to think and to investigate, not a recommendation. Anything that touches your capital deserves careful due diligence, just like anything that touches your health.
Trading carries real risk, including the risk of loss. Jeff, welcome to Healing People Not Patients. Thank you, Jonathan. [00:01:00] Loved the intro. I like to make it fun. So I did mention in the intro you built three financial companies, Zero Percent, Orca Capital, and now Nirp. I imagine there's a through line, there's some human problem that you're trying to solve.
What is that? Yeah, really trying to give freedom back to the individual. I feel that when I went through traditional education, there was a lot of important things that were left out. I was shocked that I didn't learn how to increase my credit score, or how to file my own taxes, or, how to, properly invest money.
I didn't learn about modern portfolio theory and the efficient frontier, and the things that actually matter to set you free later on in life so that you can pursue the things that you are passionate about or spend, time building your family or business or whatever it may be. So yeah, that's the primary mission for myself is just helping people create a little bit more freedom so that they have the ability to do what they want to do here on earth.
For sure. I can resonate with that [00:02:00] from my medical education where they never taught you, how to solve a dispute or how to bill correctly for the services you're providing, so I hear you. Now Orca Capital was a sort of more traditional financial services company for accredited investors, the people who already have access.
Nirb, as I understand it, is opening up that same strategy to ordinary individuals. You're showing me your values in that choice. I chose to practice primary care in a place that would serve patients without regard to their insurance status. You're sort of opening up investing to people who don't have the financial expert status.
... why did that matter to you? Yeah, because I feel that, you know, the laws are the laws first and foremost, so typically they're the way that they are for a reason. But I found that, it's a hedge fund is what Orca Capital is and it, there's a requirement to be accredited, which is a million dollars or above net worth.
there's also income limits if you don't meet the million dollar mark. But there's also, we have another fund that [00:03:00] is under Orca Capital, that's the management company. It manages multiple different funds that is, a $5 million net worth. And then there's different products that are a $10 million net worth.
And I- This is getting further and further away from my reality with every word you say. Yeah, exactly. And that's what I found is there are a lot of people that are, working hard to get on the path to, whatever their goals may be financially- ... but they're not quite there yet.
So there is a big gap in the market between, someone that's maybe worth a couple hundred thousand or- just approaching a million or maybe two million, and they can't get into the next thing, the next best product, which most people are, not able to get into.
Because the reality is most people are not worth five, 10 million plus. But when you get to that mark, I saw it in the bank as well, you get offered special types of structured products. You get different types of deal flow of different investments that you could make that are very advanced, that could, dramatically change the trajectory of your financial life.
So I wanted [00:04:00] do something where I can help the person that is actively pursuing the path to financial freedom that is, somewhat on their way, but help them expedite that as well, and hopefully, teach them a thing or two along the way. So Nirp doesn't take custody of anyone's money.
It's not an investment fund. We don't charge performance fees. It's nothing like a hedge fund. We just build technology that allows the individual to license really like an institutional grade software in their own brokerage accounts. So we're a licensing company. We're not a fund. We're not an investment company.
We don't manage anyone's money. so there is a major difference between what the fund is doing- ... how the fund operates, and what, Nirp is doing and what, how Nirp operates. So that actually leads directly to my next question. you've described sort of the three pillars of NURP as capital preservation, verified performance, and investor autonomy, and that what you were just describing is very much in the [00:05:00] autonomy bucket, which is what interests me the most.
That's super important to my patients as well, sort of being able to be in control of their health and not be railroaded into stuff. And I know what that looks like in clinic. So what does that autonomy look like for investors in practice, with what you're doing? Yeah, the main thing is what I've found that there's huge benefits to trading.
And trading is different than investing. Investing is placing money in an asset and waiting for that to appreciate. Trading is extracting money out of the market. So you can make money when the market's going up, down, or sideways. And what I found is when I'm trying to do something, it's generally best to learn from the absolute best in that industry.
So if I'm trying to learn basketball, I'm probably gonna go study what, Michael Jordan did, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, right? You're gonna look at the best people. Now, in investing and growing your wealth, most people think that the top investment manager of all time is a guy named Warren Buffett.
Everyone's heard that name, right? Everyone knows [00:06:00] who he is, and he is exceptional. But what is funny is most people don't know that He is not the most successful. In fact, there's people in the industry that have doubled his performance and been more consistent, such as a guy named Jim Simons that ran a fund called the Medallion Fund.
They averaged 66% a year for 30 years, and there's a book on him if you wanna go read more about him, named The Man Who Solved the Market. And Warren Buffett did, 20 to 30% a year. Jim Simons, more than, doubled or tripled what Warren Buffett had done over even, a multi-decade period of time.
So I studied what the most successful funds were doing. There's also another company named Jane Street that's making $5 billion a month and they're doing, like, $3.4 billion in profit out of that 5 billion. So they're actually one of the most efficient companies in the world. So I'm like, "Man, what are these guys doing?"
And what they're doing is they're building trading systems into [00:07:00] algorithms, so they code it using software, and then that software executes a predefined trading strategy. And they have dozens and dozens if not hundreds of different strategies they're running at one time, so they are very advanced and complex.
But what I found is that type of relentless compounding that they are achieving is the top investment tool in the entire industry, and it's just proven by facts that those companies are the most efficient and the most profitable that- ... really the world has ever seen. So set out on this journey about four and a half years ago to say, "Hey, how can we do this not only in our own institution to compound our wealth for our investors in a fund capacity, but also how could we potentially open this up to people that maybe either don't meet the net worth status or they are just at the place where they want to get access to some type of technology, but they don't wanna give up their custody?"
So we programmed some successful trading [00:08:00] strategies into softwares, and people can license that in their own brokerage accounts. The autonomy is that they don't need to sit there to learn how to trade because only, 96 to 99% of people tend to lose money over multiple years trading. It's justa fact that you can look up.
like Vegas, the house is always gonna come out ahead. exactly. But it's almost worse when you think about the odds. I guess maybe if you put money on black Or, played blackjack for two years straight, you would probably have a pretty terrible odds of winning. But, trading is, yeah, is pretty similar, although, there are ways to put the odds a bit more in your favor.
And that what people don't realize is, yeah, there is huge benefits to trading, which I can go into. But there's also major drawbacks. So the software takes away a lot of the major drawbacks, such as staring at a screen all day waiting for a setup. If the setup doesn't come, a lot of times you get impatient, you emotionally enter that trade before you should have entered that trade.
you don't have time to go [00:09:00] keep working on your practice or, spend time with your family and friends. A lot of the times you're just learning a strategy online, or you're in a group and someone's saying, "Hey, buy Tesla and sell it at this price," and you don't realize that they actually haven't back-tested that strategy.
They don't know that actually would have worked over the last 5, 10, 15 years. They're just guessing because, oh, they learned about a head and shoulders pattern on YouTube, and they think that's gonna be profitable, and maybe it was profitable last month, but now it's not gonna be profitable the next three months.
Right. So they don't have something called positive expectancy, which means that the strategy actually makes money, because they never spent the time and energy to code it- Mm-hmm ... and back-test it. So- ... yeah, the autonomy just gives them control of their account. They are in control of their own brokerage account.
They can deposit and withdraw at any given time, and they're leveraging a strategy that has, at least historically, positive expectancy, meaning that the strategy has worked over long periods of time. Sure. And the medical professionals listening can pick out [00:10:00] of the last two minutes of what you've been saying all sorts of cognitive mistakes that we make in practice, in research of like, "Oh, this new surgical technique's gonna be great.
I'm gonna start using it on all my patients," without ever doing the study to prove that it's better. So, That's a great example, yeah ... speaking of my audience there's a lot of people who are listening to this show about getting your soul back into medicine and doing it for the reasons that we wanted to do, most of which had nothing to do with making money.
And so I wanna make sure that we're addressing a lot of those values-driven physicians in the conversation that we're having. A lot of us are uncomfortable even talking about money. feels like it's, you know, at odds with our whole essence, our whole reason of being. So when somebody like me, who, as I've mentioned now three or four times, doesn't love talking about money, when I finally reach out to NURP what's the most common blind spot cognitive error, like we were talking about, that you can see in how we've handled our finances up to that point?
Yeah, I mean, we have over 3,500, clients that are around the world, and a fair amount of them are in the [00:11:00] medical field as well. So I'd say the biggest blind spot is a lot of the times just too much concentration risk, which is where you have too much of your wealth in one bucket, which oftentimes that's in your practice or it's, like, only in the equity market or only in real estate or only in bonds.
And when a difficult time happens where the market is maybe just chopping sideways for multiple years or, we head into a bigger bear market like '08 or, the tech bubble 2001, 2002- Yes ... it becomes quite difficult to watch pretty much your entire investment go down by 50% plus, and that's just reality.
That does happen. There's cycles in the market. Typically, just the stock market in general goes up for 15 to 20 years, and oftentimes it goes sideways for 10 to 15 years. If you look at it over long periods of time, that's generally the cycle that it goes through, and we have been just on a roaring bull market.
So if you've been in the equity market, you've had, a lot of fun the [00:12:00] past, especially the past, two years. But people forget about also the bad times and the importance of diversification. And the same thing goes with your business as well. If all of your wealth is in your business and you make no other outside investments, you still have concentration risk there as well because, there's big ups and downs in business as well.
It can be very difficult, and that's just the reality of business. So I'd say that's probably the number one thing. And then a lot of the, people that make investments- especially when you get into alternatives, because really what we offer is a way to get into alternative investments.
And I could go into the reasons why alternatives are important, but, the piece that I wanna touch on is that when you're building out a portfolio, it is important to have different assets that are uncorrelated to each other so that if one is going up, another one may be going down.
If one's going down, another one may be going up. So it smooths out the equity curve of your investments over time. our technology would [00:13:00] fit into the alternatives class, and the great thing about what we do is you're in control of your own account. yes, the strategy does 99% of the work, but you're in charge of turning it on and off and setting an equity monitor-
and just some small settings. It comes with default settings, but you have little things that you can adjust. And the great thing about it is you have liquidity, which means that when you put money into the brokerage account, you could put it in on a Monday and take it out on a Wednesday.
Most other alternative investments, like private equity or venture capital or private credit, you would be putting that money in there, and oftentimes you don't see it for three, five, 10 years- ... because they're putting that into a business. They're loaning that out to other companies. They're putting it into real estate.
And those things are illiquid. They take time. And that's the huge benefit- Yeah ... to what we do, is you have your own liquidity. You can pull it out at any given time that you want. And, I would say it solves, a big blind spot of just that, concentration risk. [00:14:00] And also the great thing too is, like, when you start to see some profit in the account, you can just take it out whenever you wish.
So it can kind of, like, supplement someone's income. I don't think it's a great thing to just say, "Oh, let me sell all my businesses and only do this thing," 'cause then you're back into concentration risk. Right. Yeah. But again, it is a great supplement to, like, an overall investment portfolio and, like, an income diversifier.
Sure. And you know, in that pool of people that I was talking about, a lot of us are also not business owners, right? the area of private practice in medicine is dwindling, if it's not fully over. There's very few people- businesses of that kind, it's all consolidated into either the private equity firms or into the large health systems.
And I work in a nonprofit, so a lot of us are getting advice, something like max out your 401or your 403because you're an employed physician. Buy some real estate on the side and hire a financial advisor. And it sounds like you're saying that playbook is inadequate [00:15:00] for 2026, especially for somebody who wants to be able to continue being an academic physician and not have to worry about the fact that, you know, academia pays less, or being in a nonprofit, that pays less.
We can do that with full integrity and feel great about the work we do, and have a source of income that's outside that sp- not consolidating everything in, just into that salary. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's important to have, like, some retirement accounts where that grows, tax-free.
It really just depends on an individual's goal. But generally, in your retirement bucket, you do want safer types of investments that have worked for 100-plus years. 'cause that's really, like, your nest egg. That's the thing that you're going to- end up retiring on, and it's hopefully gonna feed you when you don't have the ability to work anymore, you don't have the desire to.
So I think it's important to keep that bucket and to, yes, contribute to it and work on, making smart investments in there that are relatively low risk. You know, like, index funds are great because [00:16:00] they do just automatically replace the investments in there. So they're like an actively managed advisor essentially.
Because if you're in the S&P 500, it's always really the top 500 companies in the US. So when one starts to kinda die off, they kick the company out of the index- ... and they replace it with a new one. and knowing that technology and AI is gonna keep growing, my personal opinion...
And by the way, I was working for JPMorgan and was on my path to being, an advisor in the private bank. That was my s- steppingstone that I was working towards. And I was, really helping those private bankers manage their accounts for all their investors, and that was my next step.
And I was like, "You know, what I see in the industry right now is technology is rapidly changing. There's all these robo-advisors, these n- new index funds that are relatively low cost," and they really are kind of actively managed- ... because of what I just mentioned. So what is the point of the advisor?
And a [00:17:00] lot of the times the advisors are just really taking unnecessary fees that you really don't need to be paying. It really depends on the complexity of your situation and your goals. Some people may need an advisor because they are a bit more complex. But if it's very simple, you believe in AI, you believe in technology, and you believe in the United States economy, it would make sense to kinda just dollar cost average in a retirement fund, an AI index, a tech index, and the S&P 500.
I think you'd do, quite well there. But outside of that too, I also believe that, we've got a lot of people that do use Roth IRAs to use our product. So they set up the Roth IRA with the brokerage account so that they can kinda grow that tax-free. But- ... I think it is important to have the majority of your assets in something safer that compounds over time, that's proven over 100 plus years, like I was saying.
But also, even just outside of retirement, I think it is important to make other types of investments that [00:18:00] aren't sheltered in a tax environment. Because if you ever need that money, by the way- ... you're paying a big penalty. You're paying the taxes- Yeah ... then you're paying a 10% penalty. And I really believe that it's important to be building a portfolio outside of retirement accounts.
And inside of that portfolio, there is a lot of opportunity to have a bit more upside than, like, the safer things that you're doing in your retirement accounts. And that's how I would really think about what we do, is it's generally, built for investments outside of retirement accounts.
You've already got your core piece of your portfolio that's gonna grow long-term. You partition off, let's say, you know, 2 to 15%, whatever it may be- to make some alternative-based investments. Maybe it's gold, maybe you have a little bit in, like, a, private credit or something, and then, you can have a piece in a brokerage account where you're deploying one of these strategies.
Sure. The 401or the Roth is your vaccines to keep you from dying in the pandemic. The, more sort of [00:19:00] risky investments or you're, going to the gym and pumping iron for two hours so that you can, win whatever strength competition you're entering next weekend. Yeah. I get the difference.
So we talked about the particular link between financial stress and physician burnout and moral injury when I was going through my introduction. I feel like that secure foundation that we've started to talk about might change somebody's ability to be present with their patients, to say no to the wrong job or, decline to engage in some kind of questionable business practice, to basically stay in medicine for the right reasons.
Have you seen that happen with your clients? Yeah. in regards to them just being, what, doing things that are outside of maybe their risk limits or? Yeah. but also being able to just say, "You know what? the noise of worrying about my financial security is set aside and I can go to work knowing that, I'm not gonna agree to every crazy thing, every budget-cutting measure, every whatever I'm being asked to do.
I'm gonna [00:20:00] practice with integrity, and if I have to say no to something, that means I've gotta, you know, look for another thing. I've got the security to do that and really define my own path in medicine." Yeah. Yeah, totally. I think there's a huge, really just, not only financially, but a huge just boost to your energy when you feel more empowered-
and in control of the direction that you're heading, and you see a clear path to getting to where you wanna go. That's a really exciting, part of life to be in. So that's what our product does. Again, we've had quite a few medical professionals that have, different types of med spas and things like that, and they're just always on the grind, always building that next, you know- medical business, and they get really, exhausted doing those things over and over again and having to, grow a company that has the ups and downs and in their career there's major ups and downs. And, what I found is that they felt very empowered to have another source of income and another source of investing [00:21:00] outside of their financial advisors.
So yeah, I would totally, agree with you. there is a big, shift once you feel like you're a bit more in control and, you feel like you're heading in the direction that you really always wanted to. It's just hard- ... to find the vehicles to help you get there. Yeah. I can hear that.
So there's Obviously a caveat, just like I don't want my patients coming in and just accepting my advice at face value without asking questions. A lot of physicians have gone through, the kind of paternalistic model for the last decades. And I'd say in the last 25 years, we've really started to learn to be collaborative with people.
And the activated patient, the one that asks questions, is actually who we wanna be working with. So we're gonna be thoughtful consumers now and say, you're a sponsor. Super grateful that you guys have, believed in my podcast. But I want to examine carefully what we're talking about.
'cause a lot of my listeners are gonna have questions. I do wanna put a pin in what you said about the, AI versus the human advisor. We'll come back to that in a little bit. But I wanna start [00:22:00] with some things that I've heard murmurings about with algorithmic training, which is that there is a credibility problem that's not unique to trading.
but, you know, a lot of the AI space, whether it's in medicine, whether it's in finance, whether it's in, logistical management, A lot of it trades on hype, and some of us feel like there's been a lot of false promises. So, the platform gets kind of out over its skis, and we end up with underwhelming results or even dangerous results.
So for a careful, skeptical physician like me or like a lot of my listeners who don't wanna compromise their judgment, what's the way to examine and do our due diligence on a company like yours, on a company like Nerd? Yeah, I think the main reason why you're often working with us is because the product works.
So I think the main thing to do is to verify the track record, because- ... we're not going to really sell a product that doesn't have some history to it. So we do that in multiple ways. there's a third party called MyFXBook that connects- ... to our brokerage accounts. So we give it the account number and the investor [00:23:00] password, and it pulls all the data from the brokerage account, and then shows you every single trade that it's made, and what, whether it lost money, whether it won money, how many, what the win rate is, what the growth curve of the account was over time, what the, worst day, worst month was.
Mm. You can see all those analytics, and it's verified through a third party. Now, we also took the brokerage statements and sent it to another third party. And that third party also gave us a report back that says, "Yes, the data on MyFXBook is accurate, and our analysis verifies that those performance numbers-
are correct." So we've had it double verified in that sense. And then also there's a way to test the system before you even buy it, which I think- ... is a great feature that we've offered, and that's what we're gonna be doing with you, by the way, as well, if you wanna just test the system over the next 90 days.
Mm-hmm. You can do so, and it's really just on something called like a demo, like paper traded account. So you're essentially running a normal account. [00:24:00] You're connecting it to the software, and instead of you putting in real money, it's fake- demo money, so that you can just- Gotcha
watch the algorithm function, and you can watch how it trades. You can see if it's positive or negative, and what it's doing over time. And then you can get a feel for, okay, yeah, there are some ups and downs, but overall- it's more up than down, and this would make sense, and here's how I would adjust my own settings if I wanna, be more aggressive or less aggressive, and more conservative.
you get a feel for the platform. You get a feel for how it works. So I love when people start, you know, smaller, they start kind of with that demo in mind, and then they get comfortable with it, and then they start to actually place- real money in there and watch it grow over time.
Gotcha. I feel like there's an opportunity there, which unfortunately you can't do 'cause of copyright infringement, like you should call this Monopoly NURP, right? it's fantastic. But that's a really great thing. we've just started to see, people being able to kinda watch videos of or do like a little [00:25:00] VR test out of a medical procedure or something like that so that you're able to understand what you're getting into before you get into it.
that's a really great feature. I like that a lot. I also like that you have watchmen watching the watchmen who are watching the watchmen. Yeah, it's important for it to be there ... a lot of redundancy in the security there. That's helpful also. I agree. so you've kind of already done what my next question was, which is walking us through the structure to protect people, and I will award you extra points for doing it in plain English.
this is what I make my med students do all the time to remember to speak like normal humans to a patient so that they're not confusing them more than they're helping them. The one piece of the structure to protect people that you didn't talk about was there was something that was in your materials about the capital staying in the person's own brokerage account and having API only access.
So can you translate that back into terms that a simpleton doctor like myself can understand? Yeah, totally. So it's similar to you, like, opening up a broker account with, let's say, Charles Schwab or TD Ameritrade- ... or [00:26:00] one of those, typical brokers that you have, your retirement funds with.
And inside of that company that you have put money into, there's different account numbers. So you would have, a certain account number fora retirement account. Maybe you've got another account number for another investment account.
And ours is pretty similar to that structure. So you're opening up a brokerage account. That account is under your name. The only person that's in control of those funds is you. Now what you do is you deposit money into that brokerage account, and now all you're doing is you're licensing the software.
You're giving the software access to just place trades. So it can open and close trades. That's really all it can do. It can't withdraw money out of your account. So the only person that can withdraw money is you. There's no advisor. There's no person that has access to your account. Right. You in the platform license the technology into your own account, and then you can adjust the settings that the technology-
is doing [00:27:00] inside of your account. Okay. So that's the major difference. It's not like a, fund is usually pooled together money. So if you were coming into a fund, Jonathan, you would be investing money with other people into the same account. That's not what we do. All of our users have individual accounts- Got it
and then they license the technology into that individual account. That makes a lot of sense. So one of the things that you said, we've gotta look at these as these are not the bread and butter, like tried and true for 100 years investments that you're using for your nest egg. There's a little bit more risk, high-risk, high-reward products, and so we do have to talk a little bit about the losses if we're gonna be completely honest.
I don't know what Midas is, but I understand from talking to the folks on my network that they've, verified a pretty high max drawdown of about 26% on your platform. I don't totally understand the concept, but that seems like a very high number to me. So can we talk a little bit about how you would address that number and how to kind [00:28:00] of, talk frankly about it.
I'm saying you need to have this surgery, there's a pretty high risk of complications with that surgery and not shying away from it, which I will be honest with you, a lot of doctors end up doing. They kind of soft pedal the risks. So don't be like that. Hit me hard and talk to me about what the risks are and how we avoid them Yeah, so that's our, default track record.
So this is all public information that's online. You can view the track record, which has been from February 17th of 2025- Mm-hmm ... until obviously now in, in June of 2026. You can see the live account that's grown over that period of time, and what matters is really the ratio of the performance relative to the drawdown.
So there's all different types of terminologies that you could look at to kind of identify if a strategy has a strong edge in the market, such as like a Sharpe ratio or a Calmar ratio- ... or a Sortino ratio, and I won't go into all those things because- Thank you ... you can look them up on your own, [00:29:00] we don't have four hours here.
But what is important is what type of performance have you had relative to the drawdown? So what drawdown is how much has your account gone up by, and that is like the, whatever the peak is, whatever the equity has come down by after reaching that peak- Mm-hmm ... is the maximum drawdown. Mm-hmm. So the amount that the account, let's say the account went up 100% and then it came down 20% your maximum drawdown is a 20%.
Mm-hmm. So that's what that means. Now, that happens across pretty much every asset that you- Mm-hmm ... invest in, unless you're in like a certificate of deposit and you make 2% a year that has pretty much no volatility, right? Anything that comp- compounds at 5, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20% a year, will have generally more volatility, but what matters is what's the performance?
So the gains relative to the drawdown, which can be seen as an unrealized [00:30:00] loss. Sometimes it is a realized loss, meaning the trades were closed at a loss. So yeah, the system is definitely not absolutely perfect because guess what? Nothing on earth is. But what's important is from, and I did these numbers actually yesterday, is from the beginning of the track record, which again is, you know, February, or the second half of February of 2025 until June of 2026 I compared it to gold because it trades gold.
So Midas only trades gold, ... the asset of the precious metal gold. All right. Over that period of time- From February of 2025 until June of 2026, gold has had a maximum drawdown of 29.18%. So gold has actually come down by more than what the algorithm has... The algorithm has had a maximum drawdown of 26.42%.
Now, what's important is, okay, those numbers are relatively close. Obviously, gold is a little bit higher than what the Midas [00:31:00] strategy has come down by. But what is important is the performance is dramatically different. So over that same period of time, gold is up 36.4%.
Which is great. But Midas is up over 500%. So the performance that was achieved with that maximum drawdown is really exceptional, 'cause- ... it's all about how much performance do you have relative to how much drawdown you have had over that period of time. andit sounds to me like you're describing The difference between having good days and bad days, or good weeks and bad weeks, where you hit a rough patch, but if you stay the course, you end up in a much- Exactly, yeah
better place over the long haul. Exactly. Yeah, there's always ups and downs in every investment, in every trade. There's, that's just reality. That's just the name of the game. You see that in your stock portfolio too, right? When the tariff news came out, everyone's stocks went down 18% and everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, what's happening?"
And what happened? It came back and now we're well into new all-time highs. So the [00:32:00] strategy goes through those periods where it does come down for a bit. It has a losing month. Generally it has two to four losing months a year. So it is not a perfect system. This year it actually hasn't had a losing month yet.
Mm-hmm. But what matters is, the reason why I was talking about that ratio- go do something superstitious before we go on. You don't want the announcer's jinx yourself. Yeah. And I think what I was saying with the ratio that's important is, if you wanted to be less aggressive, let's say you don't want to aim for really high numbers, and you don't want to see your account come down by, you know, more than, let's say, 10%, you can lower the position size that you're telling the algorithm to take,
It's one click of a button and you change two numbers, and the algorithm changes how much money it's putting into each trade. So if you wanted lower volatility, you wanted a lower drawdown, you didn't want to lose as much on the downside, but you're also giving up more of the upside, you can just adjust one setting and bring down your risk substantially.[00:33:00]
You can also just change an equity monitor. So let's say you don't want to risk more than 10% of your account, you can set your equity monitor to 10%. So if it ever does come down by 10%, the algorithm closes all the trades, stops trading, and sends you a notification to your email. And it will not turn back on until you go into the portal and actually turn it back on.
Okay. So those are the key features that are really important, and that's why I say, you know, the ratio is what matters because at the end of the day, the user can adjust those few small settings that change the amount that was, the drawdown happened or change the amount of upside that you have.
So one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about recently, you talked about sort of the move from the human advisors- To this algorithmic type of model that you're using is sort of where ultimately it's gonna shake out that a human brain and a personal relationship is best that's the best way to [00:34:00] work things out, and which things we kind of turn over to an algorithm.
what wasn't part of my planned conversation, but I'd really like to know where does the human being, other than the customer, still remain in this? You know, in terms of you and your team that are looking at this algorithm and adjusting it. somebody who can talk to somebody like me who's trying to use the algorithm and is like, "I'm setting these parameters, but I don't actually know what I'm doing, and I need somebody to guide me."
Where is the person still in this, and where do you see them sort of remaining active in a relationship with your customers? Yeah, that's a great question. And you're talking about specifically to our product, is that right? Yeah, specifically with Nerp. I mean, If you have a grand vision for where human financial professionals are gonna be in the, brave new world of algorithmic trading, sure.
But I'm really interested in hearing about what Nerp is doing in terms of retaining the human element and the relationship. Yeah, that's a great question. We have, something called relationship managers, which is where you have a one-on-one [00:35:00] contact that you can go ask questions at any time. So when you log into the portal, there's a link that you can click to even book a call with them at any given time.
And then obviously we have, you know, 24/5 support through email, text, all that. so there's- 24/5 'cause the markets aren't open on the weekend? Yeah, you're right. the gold market's not open on the weekend. But also our employees take a break over the weekend too. Great.
that's a huge win for humanity that you have- ... you know, a real actual two-day weekend in the finance world. That's amazing. Yeah, and you're not- Because I am a Sabbath observant person, so I'm 24/6. Wow, okay. Great ... but, you've got me one better, so. Yeah, and I think it's important for obviously people to have breaks in their lives.
So and it's also important that you're not talking to just an AI chat bot. Mm-hmm. You know, people want to be speaking to an actual human that can answer the more in-depth questions. So yeah, I have a specific product team that we focus on building the systems that actually do the trading. So we build the [00:36:00] algorithms, and then we are watching how the algorithm's performance is happening in real time.
If we see the market is, like, changing dramatically and things need to be slightly adjusted, that automatically takes place. So the algorithm is growing and changing over time. It's not just a static model that always- ... stays the same. Right. That is something that the user doesn't need to do, because that is growing and changing over time.
But I think is a really, a key part of our company culture is just to empower people. So we make sure- Yeah ... that they're educated before they actually start to use the system. So you should very well understand how the system works, how the portal works, and then really, like, the three different settings that you can adjust.
Everything else, there's default settings for. There's only a few small things you can adjust. So it doesn't take an exorbitant amount of time. You don't need to turn into a mathematics professional to understand this quant model that the strategy is trading.
it's generally pretty easy to [00:37:00] understand. And, we've done our best to make that, like, speed up the learning curve to get the benefits of trading without all the drawbacks that you would generally have. Got it. So- to bring us home, for somebody who's listening and wants to look at this more carefully, see the verified numbers, understand how it works, you kind of gave us this information, but refresh our memories.
It's been, you know, 25 minutes already. Without putting anything at risk, what's the gentlest first step for them to see Nerd in action? Yeah, I think the best thing to do is to go into that demo environment, which is where it's like the paper traded account. Everything should function very similar to a live account.
So if you were to put money into an account, or you were to run a demo account, the performance should be very close to each other. You can't say 100%, 100% the same because sometimes live trading environments can be slightly different, but the demo account does its absolute best to mimic what the live account is.
And the [00:38:00] cool thing is, again, all of our track records are public. You can see all those numbers, every trade, it updates on a daily basis. So you can literally see day by day- Mm-hmm ... what trades it's made, how well it did, how bad it did, the winners, the losers, everything. So the great thing is you can come into the demo and then you can watch our live public track record, and you can say, "Oh, wow, my demo is doing almost exactly what the live track record is doing."
And you can monitor those two things and kind of compare. So there's a link below in this, recording that I believe the URL is start.nerd.com/doctors that you can join the demo. You can click on that link or type that in and you can get started with a demo account and just see how it functions.
Yep. That's great, and I gotta give you credit for that level of transparency. People have been fighting in the medical profession for decades to get hospitals to be that transparent with their outcomes. i'm very happy to hear that Never thought about that. That makes a lot of sense.
So Jeff, I really appreciate the [00:39:00] honest conversation. this is the first time I've worked with a sponsor, and I was willing to have this conversation 'cause this is an important part of self-care. I don't love the word self-care. it brings to mind a lot of woo and a lot of juice cleanses and things like that.
But- Oh, okay ... caring for yourself financially, just like maintaining relationships or having, you know, spiritual interests, those kinds of things, is part of being able to care for others, and if you're not taking care of the vessel, it's like not putting on your oxygen mask on the plane.
And I'll credit you for having a structure that keeps the investor in control of their own money, that lets you verify the performance like we just talked about and stay in control of your decisions, just like I try to help keep my patients in charge of their own decisions and not railroad them into stuff.
I gotta go back to my disclosure. This was a sponsored episode, and I'm not here to provide financial advice, but if something resonated, don't rush into things. The great basketball coach John Wooden said, "Always be fast, never hurry." go investigate it with the same care you might bring to a difficult [00:40:00] diagnosis or deciding on a procedure.
Pull up the verified numbers, read the fine print, and take your time. And Jeff just mentioned the page that he set up for our listeners. It's start.nurp.com/doctors. That's start.nurp, spelled N-U-R-P, all lowercase, .com/doctors, and you can see how it works with your money staying right where it is prior to putting any actual money in Monopoly circle TM money instead.
Thanks so much for spending this time with me, both to you and to the listeners. Take care of yourselves so you can keep taking care of the people who need you. I'm Dr. Jonathan Winkle, and this is Healing People Not Patients.