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HLHayden Lin

Finance Student

Hayden Lin

Sophomore at Rutgers Business School studying finance. I trade equity options and futures, research public equities, and run a YouTube content agency that scaled to a peak of 120 million monthly views.

Hayden Lin, portrait
School
Rutgers Business School
Degree
Finance, B.S.
Class
2029
GPA
3.96
120M
Peak monthly views
540M+
Lifetime views
11
Paid editors led
2,000
Discord community

About

Who I am

For the past two years I have built projects at the intersection of financial markets, technology, and entrepreneurship. Most of what I know came from running something real and watching the numbers tell me whether it worked.

I founded and operate a YouTube content agency that reached a peak of 120 million monthly views. I manage 11 paid editors across seven active channels, oversee production of roughly 150 short form videos a month, and use audience retention data to drive content strategy, operations, and growth decisions.

On the markets side I trade equity options and run futures prop firm evaluations using order flow, volume profile, and footprint analysis. More recently I used Claude Code to build and backtest a systematic futures order flow engine across more than 200 trading days of tick data.

I am looking for opportunities in financial markets, equity research, fintech, and startup environments where I can contribute through analytical thinking, technical problem solving, and hands on execution. Always open to connect.

Experience

What I do

Trading, operating, and research, run in parallel.

  1. Independent Trader

    November 2024 to Present

    Equity Options and Futures

    Millburn, NJ

    • Generated a 30% realized, net of commission YTD return in 2026 on a $10K independently managed account across roughly 100 trades, against a $2K maximum drawdown.
    • Trade equity options primarily in mega cap technology, and ES and NQ futures in prop firm evaluations, using volume profile, footprint charts, delta, and order flow signals.
    • Keep a detailed journal of entries, exits, and execution errors, and size positions off a fixed risk budget rather than conviction.
  2. YouTube Content Agency logo

    YouTube Content Agency

    June 2024 to Present

    Founder and Executive Director

    Millburn, NJ

    • Scaled a solo media operation from 2M to a peak of 120M monthly views within six months and launched approximately 10 channels across multiple content niches.
    • Maintain seven active channels and direct production of roughly 150 short form videos per month through standardized scripting, editing, quality control, and publishing workflows.
    • Lead 11 paid editors and approximately 15 total team members past and present, overseeing hiring, training, performance reviews, workload allocation, and production deadlines.
    • Generated five figure revenue and built a 2,000 member Discord community by applying retention analytics, creator partnerships, and channel level performance data to growth decisions.
    See the live channel numbers
  3. Rutgers Department of Finance logo

    Rutgers Department of Finance

    June 2026 to Present

    Undergraduate Research Assistant, Professor Alex Van Zant

    New Brunswick, NJ

    • Conduct research under Professor Alex Van Zant, whose scholarship bridges business management and psychology, with emphasis on social judgment, moral self perception, and organizational behavior.
    • Analyze and peer review interdisciplinary research examining why individuals perceive themselves as comparatively more moral, or less immoral, than others.
    • Evaluate theoretical framing, research methodology, supporting evidence, and conclusions to prepare structured discussion points for continued faculty research.

Work

Projects

Research, systems, and products built end to end.

Life Time Group Holdings (NYSE: LTH) logo

Life Time Group Holdings (NYSE: LTH)

April 2026

Equity Research

An independent long pitch prepared for the Rutgers Road to Wall Street interview, built from FY2023 to FY2025 filings and investor materials.

  • Identified 14.5% revenue growth to $3.00B, 139% net income growth to $374M, and margin expansion from 6% to 12%.
  • Developed a long thesis around premium member pricing power, recurring revenue, rising revenue per member, and continued expansion into affluent suburban markets.
  • Argued the discount against Planet Fitness, which trades near 28x earnings on half the revenue and slower earnings growth, and sized the gap at roughly 25% upside on a 22x multiple.
  • Covered catalysts, competitive positioning, and macro risk, including a 16.8x trailing P/E, a $500M repurchase authorization, roughly 15% insider ownership, and 12 to 14 planned annual club openings.
Read the full memo
Revenue
$3.00B
Net income growth
139%
Trailing P/E
16.8x

Futures Order Flow Engine

2026

Quantitative Research

A multi timeframe order flow engine built to put a discretionary futures model through a decade of tick data and see what the numbers said about it.

  • Processed 235M ticks across 213 trading days and 240 plus focused market hours, identifying 620 valid setups.
  • Backtested 89 simulated trades across those setups, which returned a 64% win rate, a 1.84 profit factor, and a 1.8R average winner against a fixed risk model.
  • Encoded volume profile, footprint, and delta signals into reproducible rules, then forward tested them on out of sample data as a check on the backtest.
  • Carried the volume profile, footprint, and delta work into how I read and execute trades discretionarily today.
Ticks processed
235M
Setups identified
620
Backtest win rate
64%
Griff logo

Griff

April 2025 to Present

Community Economy

A virtual economy running inside the 2,000 member Discord attached to the channels, built to turn an audience that watches into a community that shows up daily.

  • Engineered the currency system end to end: how often each command pays out, the odds of winning or losing on it, the coins at stake per action, and the pricing of everything they buy, from Discord roles to in game Brawl Stars rewards.
  • Sustained 1,110 participants and roughly 175,000 messages across two channels over 16 months of continuous operation.
See the full leaderboard
Participants
1,110
Messages
~175K
Forge logo

Forge

June 2026 to Present

AI Fitness App

A closed beta fitness application that puts calorie and macro logging, workout planning, workout tracking, and weight tracking in one product.

  • Built and deployed across approximately 20 synced accounts, with diet, workout, and weight data centralized for ongoing tracking.
  • Engineered Gemini API powered meal logging that processed approximately 500 food entries, roughly 70% of them submitted through photo based tracking rather than natural language or manual entry.
  • Shipped 50 plus product updates and Vercel deployments, iterating on onboarding, usability, data flows, and application logic from friends and family feedback.
forgegains.vercel.app
Beta accounts
~20
Food entries
~500
Releases
50+

Education

School

Rutgers Business School logo

Rutgers Business School

September 2025 to May 2029

Bachelor of Science, Finance

New Brunswick, NJ

Standing
Sophomore, 69 credits
GPA
3.96, Dean's List every semester
Coursework
Financial Accounting, Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Supply Chain Management, Marketing, Management
Involvement
Little Investment Bankers at Rutgers (Member), Ascend New Brunswick (Member)
Millburn High School logo

Millburn High School

2021 to 2025

Athletics
Varsity Swimming (Captain)
Involvement
Investment Club (Vice President)
SAT
1540

Skills

Tools and capabilities

Markets and Trading

  • Backtesting
  • Volume Profile
  • Risk Management
  • Footprint Charts
  • Financial Markets
  • Technical Analysis
  • Order Flow Analysis
  • Options and Futures Trading

Investment Research and Analytics

  • Equity Research
  • Equity Valuation
  • Catalyst Analysis
  • Financial Modeling
  • Business Analytics
  • Data Visualization
  • Comparable Company Analysis
  • Financial Statement Analysis

Product, AI, and Automation

  • Claude API
  • Gemini API
  • Claude Code
  • Ollama Models
  • API Integration
  • Product Strategy
  • Vercel Deployment
  • Closed Beta Testing

Growth and Operations

  • Growth Strategy
  • Team Leadership
  • Content Operations
  • Hiring and Training
  • Community Management
  • Performance Analytics

Platforms

  • Webull
  • Lucid Trading
  • Rithmic
  • MotiveWave
  • TradingView
  • Excel

Credentials

  • Bloomberg Market Concepts
  • Bloomberg Finance Fundamentals
  • CITI Social, Behavioral, and Epidemiologic Research Investigators
  • Excel Essential Training (Microsoft 365)

Honors and awards

  • YouTube Silver Play Button
  • Dean's List, all semesters
  • 4 Presidential Volunteer Service Awards (1 Gold, 3 Bronze)

Languages

  • English (Native)
  • Mandarin (Proficient)