Interview  |  JUL 1999

Interview: From The Pit To The PC: Lewis J. Borsellino by Thom Hartle

From The Pit To The PC Lewis J. Borsellino The current, never-before-seen bull market in stocks has led to tremendous growth in trading the Standard & Poor’s 500 futures pits. One top S&P trader, Lewis Borsellino, has been a runner, a clerk, a broker, an independent trader, and now, a fund manager. Recently, Borsellino wrote about his life and time in the pits in The Day Trader: From The Pit To The PC. STOCKS & COMMODITIES Editor Thom Hartle interviewed Borsellino on April 21, 1999, asking him about, among other things, his strengths, his mistakes, the future of futures, and more. Did your trading career begin in the Standard & Poor’s pit? No, my trading career began in the gold futures pit. At one time, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s gold pit was the largest and traded the most volume of gold contracts. At that time, gold was trading over $800 per ounce. One day, I was playing racquetball with a trader and I asked him if I could open an account to trade gold futures. He suggested I come down to the exchange and see what it was like. He didn’t want me to just open up an account, he said, because I didn’t know what I was doing and I would just be throwing my money away. The moment I walked out on the trading floor, though, I thought it was the greatest thing I ever saw in my life.

by Thom Hartle