AutoPilot Your Wealth
Build Wealth with Rules, not Reactions
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I help people to stop guessing and start running their money with rules. Real accounts, real trades, real results.
I’m Pate Butler, a retired military aviator with 26 years in the cockpit, including Army rotary-wing and airline flying. In 2008, I watched my investments crater because I had opinions instead of a system. I had no rules, no plan for a crash, and no idea how to protect what I’d built.
That failure became the starting point for everything you see here. I spent over a decade studying options, testing strategies, and building a framework that treats investing the way I was trained to fly with checklists, defined rules, and a plan for when things go wrong.
AutoPilot Your Wealth is the result: a rules-based system that pairs the S&P 500 with a small LEAPS options overlay, backed by 67 years of stress-tested data and designed to beat the market average without requiring you to predict anything.
I trade this system with my own money. I show exactly what I do, every position, every roll, every number. No black boxes. No hidden strategies. Just rules.
Built by a Pilot. Tested by the Market.
The APYW System
AutoPilot Your Wealth is built on one core idea. A rules-based system that performs across decades of market data, not just the last bull run. No market timing. No stock picking. No gut calls..
Built on the S&P 500
The S&P 500 is the foundation. Every strategy on this channel is layered on top of it because 67 years of stress testing show it is the most reliable engine in plain sight. The question is not whether to own it. The question is how to amplify it during accumulation and how to protect what you have built during retirement.
Two Phases, One System
The accumulation phase uses options-based overlays on the S&P 500 to compound faster than the index without taking on stock-picking risk. The retirement phase shifts the same foundation into a guardrail-based withdrawal system designed to survive sequence-of-returns risk. Both are tested against every major drawdown in modern market history.
The Standard
Every rule has a reason. Every reason has data behind it. If a strategy cannot survive the worst windows in market history, it does not make it on this channel. That standard applies to every system tested here, including ones I built myself.
What You'll Find Here
The Cockpit: Real Money, Real Decisions
Every account on this channel is real. Actual balances, actual trades, actual decisions as they happen. Captain's Account, First Officer's Account, Roth IRAs. You see every position, every dollar, every move. No paper trading. No hypotheticals. Full transparency as the portfolio grows toward retirement.
Captain Cole: Retirement Model Portfolio
A $1,000,000 model portfolio running the full retirement system from day one. Monthly withdrawals, real market conditions, tracked on screen. This is what the retirement phase looks like in practice, not in theory.
The Stress Test
Popular financial strategies broken with real data. The standard is simple. If a strategy cannot survive the worst markets in history, you will see it fail here before it fails in your account. That goes for every system tested on this channel, including ones I built myself.
Flight School
The Foundational Flight Plan and Glide Path to Retirement playlists walk through the entire system from the ground up. How LEAPS options work, what 67 years of data actually show, why the S&P 500 is the foundation, and how the retirement guardrail system protects your income across every major crash in modern history.
Free spreadsheets, calculators, and stress-tested data. One monthly email with real account updates. No hype, no spam.
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Weekly videos covering real retirement accounts, stress-tested strategies, and market analysis through the lens of a rules-based framework.
Questions or Media Inquiries
For general questions, media requests, or speaking inquiries. Please note: this site does not provide personalized investment advice.