Bernard Drury, a top trader, took a typical not so typical route to trading success. An excerpt from Futures magazine:
“So, how does this Russian language major do it? Not surprisingly, he attributes his success to lots of hard work and a little good fortune. Just out of Dartmouth College, Drury took a job as a trader in the grain markets at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange thinking the international aspect of trading would put his Russian skills to use. Though he never needed to speak the language, he grew more interested in the trading industry. His next job took him to Washington, D.C., where he worked as a writer analyzing the grain markets and how agricultural policies affected them. For more than eight years, he watched the grain markets and learned to anticipate certain responses to news and events, a skill that would come in handy later. “I was eager to get back to trading. So in 1990, I moved back to Chicago to trade for myself,” Drury says. It’s no surprise that he stuck to what he knew and traded grain spreads. “It was serendipitous that I chose to study for the MBA while I was in Chicago because, as part of a class project, I did research on the managed futures industry,” he says, describing how that in-depth look turned his attention to a new aspect of trading. “I am lucky I did that class project because it encouraged me to set up a CTA firm of my own.”
Today, Bernard has left the fundamentals behind and is a successful trend following trader.