What is this Chicago Tradition we keep talking about? Well in this case it’s not losing baseball teams, crooked politicians, or deep-dish pizza – it is the way traders in the futures and options business learned their craft – from other traders. For over 150 years, as Chicago became the home of futures, and later options, trading, a system of personal mentoring began to develop. Young people would start working at the most menial, low-paying jobs and work their way up in responsibility. The pay would not improve much, but the access to trading and traders would increase with each rung of the ladder. By the time someone was ready to join the community of floor traders they had learned a great deal and developed relationships with traders. These relationships were essential for the survival of a young trader. No matter how much a young trader thought they knew, actual trading was always scary. It helped to have someone looking over your shoulder telling you what you did right and what you did wrong. Many of us would not have survived without that mentoring.
Take our stories for example:
Bill Gruzynski, our futures director, started at the Chicago Board of Trade in the early 70’s. With a degree in biology from Northern Illinois University, Bill got a job as a runner and then a grain analyst on the CBOT floor. He moved over to CME floor where he was a market analyst and a floor manager. By the time he walked into the Treasury Bill pit in 1980 as an independent trader and floor broker, he had held almost every job one could hold on a trading floor save for janitor or security guard.
At every stop on his career path, he learned a little more about the business of futures, and he wasn’t alone. For at each stop there was a new mentor, someone showing him the ropes, and that journey did not end when he became a trader; in fact it had just begun.
Bill learned from the traders he began with on the trading floor in the T-Bill Pit and he learned more from the traders he traded with in the Standard and Poor’s 500 Pit.
While preparing to leave the trading floor to trade ‘upstairs’, and run managed commodity funds, he was still learning; this time from people like the legendary Richard Dennis.
“I’m always learning” says Gruzynski “I learn new things from my contemporaries in CAIA (Chartered Alternative Investment Association). And even my son Bill, who recently graduated from Columbia University and is running a trade desk in New York. A good trader never stops learning, because the market never stops changing.
Dan Keegan, CST’s Options Director, moved to Chicago after graduating from Marquette University. “I heard about the options business and the CBOE from some of my Chicago friends” Says Keegan. “I was lucky, if I didn’t know Chicago people, I probably never would have gotten into this business.”
Dan’s Journey was similar to Bill’s; runner, phone clerk, and eventually floor broker for A.G. Becker on the CBOE floor. “When I got there, the CBOE was less than a decade old and they had just started trading puts” says Keegan “The people I was learning from were some of the best market-makers on the CBOE. People like Ken Brown at Becker and others who actually invented some of the strategies I now teach my students.”
Dan’s career as an independent floor trader began with an assist from legendary Chicago Trader and adventurer Steve Fossett. “Steve made a lot of money by backing young traders with potential and letting them learn and develop their craft at their own pace” remembers Dan. “That independent spirit of adventure that Steve later became world famous for was, I think, what attracted him to this business in the first place.”
CST’s managing partner, PJ McCarthy, also paid his dues in the Chicago Tradition. “My first boss was Bill Gruzynski, and he taught me everything he knew. But I made it anyway – just kidding.” says McCarthy.
Like his partners, McCarthy was a runner, phone clerk, pit clerk, and floor manager. “The thing that I remember most about all those jobs was how lousy the pay was. And if you complained, they would always say ‘You should be paying us for what you’re learning and if you don’t like the pay, there’s fifty people waiting to take your job.’ And they were right” said McCarthy “If you compare what we got paid to what we should’ve been paid we ended up paying an awful lot of money for our market education.”
The upside of that financial sacrifice for McCarthy and others became obvious when he began trading: “I started trading on the day the S&P 500 contract opened. I was pretty nervous, but then I looked around and saw a lot of familiar faces: Traders and brokers who I had worked with and helped out over the years, and now they were looking out for me. They were quick to point out when I made a mistake and they made the transition a whole lot easier.”
The question today is how to keep the Chicago Tradition alive while the culture from which it sprang is dying. The trading floors and the jobs that were the stepping stone of our and so many other careers are vanishing. The Chicago School of Trading’s mission is to keep the Chicago Tradition alive.
By using the same technology that made the trading floor obsolete, CST hopes to give our students the same leg up that we received. So that when our students start trading, they have the same background and knowledge in the markets that we had. And, perhaps more importantly, someone looking over their shoulder offering the advice, encouragement and knowledge that only experience can offer.
Join us and become part of that tradition.
