Buck Haworth – Open Outcry Traders History Project – Part 2

Buck Haworth has been a consultant, a CPA, a back office accountant, an exchange audit department executive, a foreign exchange arbitrage desk manager, an exchange member, a scalper, a spreader, an exchange board member and officer, and a technology entrepreneur.

In part 2 of his interview with John Lothian News for the MarketsWiki Education Open Outcry Traders HIstory Project, he talks about why traders prefer to be bears and not bulls. He says floor traders are the “largest concentration of people with ADHD” and how this influences them in being bullish or bearish. He tells the story of some traders banging into other traders before the open to get their energy levels up.

He talks about the FBI sting at the CME in the late 1980s, the CME Group going public, and the dynamics on the exchange’s board over hiring and then getting rid of Jim McNulty as CEO, and he speaks candidly about the relationship between brokers and their favorite locals. His work on the board of the CME took up so much time that Haworth lost the feel for floor trading. His efforts to try electronic trading left him with the observation that electronic trading is a video game and floor trading is rugby. He said few people can do both successfully.

In part 2, he continues to offer frank answers to the questions posed to him and says, “Life is not fair, the floor was not fair,” and that we should get over it. Enjoy this second and final part of the interview with Born Technology Co-founder and CFO Buck Haworth.

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