This is the story of open outcry trading, electronic trading and an imaginary secret organization I created to tell the story of both. This was the first time I used SPET, or the Society for the Promotion of Electronic Trading, to tell a story.

Before the CME went public in 2002, there was a change in leadership at the top. Terry Duffy ran for the job of chairman of the board against the incumbent, Scott Gordon. I was a fan of Gordon’s and then CME CEO Jim McNulty. McNulty was one of the reasons I started the John Lothian Newsletter.

Activities in big bank options market making, Boris Johnson’s surprise announcement and James Harden’s offensive basketball acumen are all covered in this week’s episode of “The Spread.” 

In this episode of “The Spread,” we take a look at the importance of fly fishing, legal lingo and Twitter risk.  

In this video from MarketsWiki Education’s World of Opportunity event in Chicago, ABN AMRO Clearing Chicago CFO Mike Nowak talks about rolling with the punches – from changing careers due to 9/11 to learning about derivatives on the fly on the trading floor. 

In this video from MarketsWiki Education’s World of Opportunity event in Chicago, Women’s Money Lab Co-Founder Nancy Kaplan emphasizes how crucial it is, in particular for women, to talk about money and to establish money goals.

In this video from MarketsWiki Education’s World of Opportunity event in Chicago, Jason Manumaleuna, the CEO of the RCG division of Marex Spectron, talks about some of the false starts in his life and advises students to focus on soft skills such as public speaking and business writing in addition to academics, and to “be the most impactful person in the room” rather than the smartest.

If you had told Julie Lerner eight years ago that the commodity trading platform PanXchange, which she was building with sugar in mind, would grow to support the trading of frac sand, East African grains and hemp, she would have said you are nuts.