About
I almost wish I could have one of those ‘interesting’ stories about how I lived in my parent’s basement, was flat broke and struggling trading until I found the "Holy Grail," but the honest truth is that’s not what happened. I came from an upper middle class family. Growing up some of my friends dad’s were traders at the CME and CBOT. I had always dreamed of being a trader. While in college I worked full-time in a grocery store. After graduating college with a degree in Economics I took the summer off until I ran out of money. A former colleague from working in the grocery store recommended me as a management trainee with a big national grocery chain. After a year I was already a manager, making actually decent money and on a career track. It was a solid job, I mean everyone has to eat so they have to buy groceries. But I knew deep down that working in a grocery store was not what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a trader. I had friends working on the CME floor and telling me about the excitement of first walking onto the trading floor. I was fortunate to get an introduction to the CME floor manager for Dean Witter who hired me. When I got into Futures industry I started at the bottom - I worked as a runner on the CME floor for Dean Witter earning the princely sum of $6.25 an hour, which for a runner on the CME floor in the early 1990's was on the high side. I worked hard to learn anything and everything I could from everyone I who would talk to me. I was like a sponge. Some people may say that I was in the right place at the right time, but what I did was position myself to be in the right position through hard work. I worked my way up and eventually off the CME floor with Dean Witter, then moving to EDF Man, Commerzbank, Cargill and finally JP Morgan. In 2013, 3 months the birth of my daughter I decided to leave JP Morgan. It was a life changing decision. Going from a cushy job at one of the biggest investment banks to trading from myself in a home of
