|  NOV 1989

Shelly Natenberg: trader and teacher by John Sweeney

Shelly Natenberg: trader and teacher by John Sweeney Shelly Natenberg, a floor trader at the Chicago Board of Trade, is the author of Options Volatility & Pricing Strategies, Probus Publishing, Chicago, 118 North Clinton St, Chicago, IL 60606, (800) 426-1520 or (312) 346-7985. He has been teaching options for six years to professional and floor traders at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and is currently active in giving seminars for many different exchanges. Shelly, Probus sent us your book for review. I've scanned through this thing, but I wanted to get some more background on you before diving in. Can you give me information about who you are and where you came from? I'm basically just a floor trader. I started teaching options as a sideline about 5 or 6 years ago—only to professional or floor traders. I was teaching for the Merc [Chicago Mercantile Exchange] in Chicago so I developed a manual for floor traders. Then, I guess my name got passed around. I did some more teaching for other firms, Bear Stearns, Chicago Research and Trading and a few others, and then got invited by other exchanges. I'm still just a single guy on the floor but I've done quite a few seminars for other exchanges. Let's see, I've done them for the CME [Chicago Mercantile Exchange], the Board of Trade [Chicago Board of Trade], the CBOE [Chicago Board of Options Exchange], the NYFE [New York Futures Exchange] and the Coffee Sugar, & Cocoa Exchange [CSCE]. I'm scheduled to do one for the New York Merc [New York Mercantile Exchange], two for SIMEX in Singapore and some for LIFFE [London International Financial Futures Exchange] in London. Gadzooks! Most guys on the floor aren't really known for their teaching skills... No! And I have no teaching background. I just sort of fell into it. You know how a floor trader's income fluctuates...and when I first started trading I was looking for ways to make a few dollars and smooth out the income flow. I got a few friends together as guinea pigs, and I tried it out on them. Then I knocked on a few doors, and put out a few letters just to see what would happen and I got, well, the first major response I got was CRT. That was, I guess, just a stroke of luck because, you know, they are pretty well known in the industry. They recommended me to other people so I guess I was just fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time. I just basically try and teach traders the theory they need to know as professional traders in order to go out and make an intelligent decision. I'm not an advisory service. I don't try and make decisions for the people, I just try to help them make their own decisions.

by John Sweeney