I am a reporter for Pittsburgh Business Report and a former reporter for Bloomberg in New York. I have been trading leveraged markets since 1995. My “training” was in futures. I was a commodites broker for seven years in Chicago, during which time I had every success and every failure trading the markets that you can imagine. There is no better education than experience. After serving as a guest on various financial networks (CNBC, Bloomberg, CNNfn, local Chicago WCIU), I went on to Bloomberg to become their Economics Editor.
The Bloomberg covered primarily economic data and interest rate trading during the morning television program. The job was OK, the hours stunk. The challenge for me was to report without opinion. Since I had a fair amount of market experience, and I traded for my own account, it was very hard not to HAMMER the viewer with what I saw as obvious trading opportunities. This was during the tech collapse of 2000-2002. The US government was running a surplus (which sucks money away from the private sector) and stocks and interest rates were falling fast. The best thing I could do was to surround myself with the smartest economists and traders out there and report THEIR opinions. I learned more about market function from these Wall Streeters than I could have EVER learned on my own. (You think you’re smart until you meet someone that really IS…)
I currently am a stay-at-home Mom and trade for my own account (with restrictions, which I will highlight in the disclaimer section) and am happy to share all that I have learned. If you are new to the markets, I recommend that you read my book: The Fundamentals of the Futures Markets, (McGraw-Hill, 2000.) This book, while a bit outdated and not perfect by any means, encompasses everything that I learned as a broker in the 1990′s. In my opinion, it shares with the reader insights to the world of commodity trading that cannot be found anywhere else. This blog is designed to pick up where the book left off. I wish you all the best in your trading endeavors.
Bloom where you’re planted,
—Donna Kline
