Interview  |  DEC 2007

Interview: Jim Dalton of DLC Profiles by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan

Interview: Jim Dalton of DLC Profiles by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan Author and former hedge fund manager James Dalton is a Market Profile believer, and he’d be the first to tell you that. A member of both the CBOT and the CBOE, he served as executive vice president of the CBOE during its formative years. Between writing Mind Over Markets and his latest book, Markets In Profile, he also served as director of research for managed accounts at UBS Financial Services, where he worked with an array of professional money managers. As a result of this experience, Dalton has come to place added emphasis on employing Market Profile for the longer time frames. STOCKS & COMMODITIES Editor Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan interviewed Jim Dalton on October 10, 2007, via telephone. Jim, how did you get interested in the markets? I came out of the Marine Corps and went to work for IBM. I was there about a year and a half. I was the top salesman in the country, and I hated every day of it. Then I went to work for Merrill Lynch as a broker. Shearson Lehman hired me after that but I didn’t think their research was any better, so I started doing my own research in stocks but that still wasn’t any better than what they had to offer. Then I got involved with a couple of professors at the University of California –Irvine campus. They had a strategy where they would be long stock and short warrants, knowing that the warrants would converge. I was fascinated, and since warrants are similar to options I was able to gain some background in options. Dalton on October 10, 2007, via telephone. Eventually, I went to work for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), where I was responsible for research and public investor affairs, and was the director of marketing. The early days of the CBOE were interesting because it put me in touch with all the brokerage firms and all proprietary trading accounts. I got a pretty good foundation in options.

by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan