Stocks & Commodities V. 26:11 (64, 66-70): Interview: Tuning Into The Pits With Jack Broz

Interview: Tuning Into The Pits With Jack Broz

Amid these turbulent times in the market, Jack Broz is keeping an ear out on what’s happening on the trading floor. He has been a member of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) since 1996 and has traded bond and Dow futures since then. He is founder of The Marlin Letter (www.themarlinletter.com), a trading advisory and education company and sole producer of the information content. Broz provides two live interactive, Internet-based trading rooms direct from the floor of the CBOT five days a week, seven hours a day. STOCKS & COMMODITIES Editor Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan (JG) and Staff Writer Bruce Faber (BF) interviewed Jack Broz via telephone on October 10, 2008.

Jack, how did you get started in trading?

I ran health clubs for 15 years and noticed a customer one day who would always come in to work out, and then go surf. After seeing him do that for a month or so, I asked him what he did for a living. He said he traded options on the OEX. I knew nothing about the markets — this was in the mid-1980s — but I knew that options were something in the financial industry. So he took me under his wing a bit and started showing me some ways to analyze the stock market and suggested a few good books to read and a few good sources of information. For a year I studied charts, and I found I enjoyed it.

We were talking at one point about trading commodities, and he said that he would not touch them. So I figured that had to be where the money was really at, if someone who seemed to know what he was doing was wary of them. I was from Chicago, so I came back to Chicago. I thought that if I could get a job at one of the exchanges I could really learn this commodities stuff. So I got a job at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to work in the pits as a price reporter.