My name is Joseph Lackland…
I was fresh out of high school when I started my first job as a runner at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in the S&P 500 futures pit. 1999 was quite a year to be introduced to the markets. I remember my first day vividly as my training began on the job.
A fellow runner had me tag along with him as we made our rounds to the different traders of our company collecting cards and handing out envelopes full of request money for the day. The Eurodollars pit was a sight to see with paper flying everywhere, phones ringing relentlessly, and masses of people shouting anything and everything you can imagine at each other from bell to bell, and then some!
Into the Pit.
I started answering phones at the option desk where I learned about derivatives and then I jumped into the pit as a clerk for independent brokers. This was how I learned both sides of the business. Five years passed and I found myself trading in an office for a friend that worked with me at the trading desk. I was leasing an IOM seat on the exchange and trading Emini S&P 500 futures.
I saw open-outcry slowly but surely become a thing of the past as the new evolutionary phase of trading took center stage. I went to the bookstore almost every day to read books on trading and the psychology of trading. I studied price action while drawing notebooks full of patterns and scenarios. I did pretty well during this time. Everything was great until 2008… then the meltdown took its toll on the industry.
Everything Changed
The game was forever changed and the electronically traded futures contracts became dominated by PhD level developers and veteran elite traders armed with the best hardware a lot of money can buy, which is pretty good! My trading took a nosedive. I was one of the fastest clickers but I was still way behind the capabilities of the scripts the competition was using. My friends lost their jobs, my account was bled dry, my life had become consumed by the modern financial machine, and it seemed I would join the ranks of so may others that had been pushed out of the business for good.
That was when I decided it was time to learn how to write what the big boys were using to trade the market. I opened up my first indicator and studied it using the skills I had been taught in physics class. I learned how to write one line, then another line and then another. Friends and family paid for me to go to private C# classes to further my development. I learned how to write my own customized indicators and fully automated strategies for myself.
Developing Products for Private Clients
I then began to work part-time as a contractor designing products for private clients. The knowledge and the wisdom I obtained working with so many talented and experienced clients is priceless. Some of those clients I still have to this day, and we are in a good place. The products available here are my own personal trading tools I use every day, and I am delivering them to you to help guide you on your trading journey.
Life is a journey we should all make together, and we should help each other as much as we can to get to our goals.
Joseph Lackland
Future Script… for your future…