TOM ZAGARA – PART 2 – OPEN OUTCRY TRADERS HISTORY PROJECT

Tom Zagara has lots of great stories to tell from his time as a trader at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. There were so many, we broke his interview into two parts. In Part 2 of his interview for the Open Outcry Traders History Project, Zagara tells the tale of the drug bust on the CBOE trading floor and how the runners and clerks on the floor dumped their drugs into the garbage cans and then dove in to retrieve them when the FBI had left. He talks about how he and other traders would protect brokers and eat bad trades when necessary to be on the brokers’ good side when orders came to the trading pit. Zagara almost went bankrupt twice, but learned his lesson. Sometimes he learned it the hard way. This is part two of a two part interview Tom did with John Lothian News for the Open Outcry Traders History Project.

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