Open Outcry Traders History Project

Chris Hehmeyer started out as a runner in the CBOT grain pits, but he really wanted to get into the financial room – which many of the grain traders sneered at. He did it, trading bonds and eventually becoming a phone clerk. From there, he moved up to starting his own...

David Johnson was trading OTC stocks and options for Pershing in 1970. He was in the right place at the right time when the CBOT decided to launch an options exchange. He came to Chicago in 1974 from New York and never left. He saw the immense growth of the CBOE and...

David Greenberg started his career in Chicago as a runner making $3.75 an hour. HIs father was a COMEX trader who later served as chairman of COMEX. So Greenberg took his Chicago experience to New York and started working for his father’s company on COMEX. But he...

Art Margulis answered a job advertisement in the Chicago Tribune for a research analyst position at the Chicago Board Options Exchange after graduating from Princeton. That was his entry into the world of open outcry trading. At the CBOE, Margulis met Blair Hull, who...

Tom Rinaudo was selling real estate when his mother heard about a job at the Chicago Board of Trade. He had no idea what the Board of Trade was all about, but he said yes and was hired by JK McKerr in a back office job. Rinaudo wishes he could have started 10 years...

Joyce Selander is a former open outcry trader and one of the few women who found a home in a trading pit of men much bigger and stronger than her. But she found a niche and had friends in the trading pit who would help protect her from the organized chaos that was pit...

James Gordon spent eight years working on the Cboe trading floor as a trader for Timber Hill. His experience, and how he was treated as a trader, was different from others’. He found his way to the exchange through a brother who was a clerk at the CME. Gordon was an...

Maureen Obermeier started on the CBOE floor the summer after her freshman year of college and never left. She helped some friends get jobs that summer, and some, like her, stayed and built careers in the markets. She became a CBOE member when she turned 21 and filled...

Chess Obermeier started working for his cousin, Charles Obermeier, at the Cboe, and was able to purchase his first membership by his 21st birthday. He eventually made his way to the CBOT in 1984, where he traded grain up until 2016. During his time on the floor, Chess...

Jack Sandner is a former chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and longtime board member of the CME Group. In part two of this interview with John Lothian News for the MarketsWiki Education Open Outcry Traders History Project he talks about how the S&P 500...

John F. (Jack) Sandner is a boxer, lawyer, trader and former CME chairman who served as a director of CME Group from July 2007 to February of 2018. Sandner sat for an interview with John Lothian News for the MarketsWiki Education Open Outcry Traders History Project....

Jeff Carter is a Chicago-based trader and venture capital executive and long time member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where he formerly served on their board of directors. He is currently a manager with West Loop Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund....