Ask mrbaseball about trading for a living

[mrbaseball]

Okay, you asked for it and I'll try to do my best.

First a little history and a few groundrules. I have been a professional trader for 20 years. By professional I mean I have been employed as a trader during that period other than a few years when I went on my own and formed a partnership. I started in June of 1987 as a market maker in the US T-Bond options pit at the Chicago Board of Trade. After about 7 or 8 years of that I moved to spreading interest rate futures (2yr, 5yr, 10yr, Tbond). Then I moved to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange where I was involved in some arbitrage opportunities as well as spreading back month Eurodollars against 5 year notes. Then I moved off of the floor when electronic trading became more prevalent and traded a variety of speculation and arbitrage opportunities.

Currently I do a lot of different stuff. My main responsibility is managing an in house stock options portfolio. Luckily this isn't real time consuming so I have the opportunity to get involved in some arbitrage as well as speculative programs I have created and I also scalp spreads and outrights in a variety of markets. I am more of a jack of all trades rather than a specialist. I will trade anything that looks like an opportunity however there are some markets I like better than others. Over the years I have traded virtually every commodity and it's accompanying options in some form or another.

I won't speak specifically to many of the arbitrage things that I do and I won't discuss compensation other than to say I do okay.