ANDY WALDOCK

Commodity and Derivative Advisors is a full service brokerage firm located in Sandusky, OH. While not the financial hub of the U.S. economy, Sandusky was home to one of the largest retail brokerage firms, Lind-Waldock.

My name is Andy Waldock and I have been involved in the futures industry my entire adult life. Two weeks after my eighteenth birthday, I began my career at 5:30 am C.S.T. reconciling trades on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Working for Lind-Waldock allowed me to move from one market's open to the next.....currencies, meats, stock indices, and rotate backwards for the closes. During my three years of clerking, I was able to learn the ins and outs of customers' order routing, execution and processing. I also developed many valuable friendships that allow me to keep in touch with the vital workings of the various exchanges. At 21, I began trading for my own account in the S&P 500 pit. Over the next several years, my relationships branched out into executing orders at the retail and institutional level for many of the major players.

Two moments from these years are worth sharing. First, after a particularly grueling day, early on in the S&P 500 pit, I sat down in the members' break room. My frustration was written all over my face when one of the old, old, blackboard traders, Bill Katz, sat down next to me and asked, "Did you bust out?" I told him that I hadn't and I just felt like I was never going to quit spinning my wheels. He broke trading dow