Co-Founder, Najarian Advisors
Jon ‘DRJ’ Najarian was linebacker for the Chicago Bears before he turned to another kind of contact sport – trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. He became a member of the CBOE, NYSE, CME and CBOT and worked as a floor trader for some 25 years. In 1990 he founded Mercury Trading, a market-making firm at the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), which he sold in 2004 to Citadel, one of the world’s largest hedge funds. In 2005 Jon co-founded optionMONSTER and tradeMONSTER. He partnered with private equity firm General Atlantic Partners in 2014 and they sold the firm to E*Trade for $750 million in September of 2016. Today, he is a professional investor, money manager and media analyst. Jon has earned a reputation in the industry as an options trading expert and pioneer. He developed and patented trading applications and algorithms used to identify unusual activity in stock, options, and futures markets. optionMONSTER, the options news and education site he co-founded, was described by Securities Industry News as “content king of the options business.” For years, tradeMONSTER was consistently rated “Best for Options Traders” by Barron’s and was the first online broker to deploy streaming, desktop-like trading in a web browser. Jon can be seen weekly on CNBC, where he is cast member of the “Halftime Report” and “Fast Money” shows. Jon and Pete invest in and work with start-ups via Rebellion Partners, a venture consulting firm they launched in 2015. In 2016, Jon and Pete co-founded Market Rebellion, a company focused on educating the individual investor.