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Reflecting on Career Journeys with Cathy Clay, Liz Dierking and Jenny Andrews
With the summer internship season underway, we’re reflecting on the beginning of our career journeys and how our team members got to where they are today. Cathy Clay, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Derivatives, Liz Dierking and Jenny Andrews, former market makers and now the hosts of tatylive’s The LIZ and JNY Show, all share one thing in common, they began their journeys on an options trading floor.
Read MoreWith the summer internship season underway, we’re reflecting on the beginning of our career journeys and how our team members got to where they are today. Cathy Clay, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Derivatives, Liz Dierking and Jenny Andrews, former market makers and now the hosts of tatylive’s The LIZ and JNY Show, all share one thing in common, they began their journeys on an options trading floor.
Career Beginnings
Jenny Andrews began her career like many other college students, with a summer internship. Jenny landed an internship on the Cboe trading floor in the OEX Pit as a quote reporter. At the end of the summer, Jenny returned to University of Illinois where she was studying economics and Spanish and took every options class she could find, though there weren’t many. Jenny returned right back to the Cboe trading floor after graduation and continued working on the floor for the entirety of her career, until she and Liz began The LIZ & JNY Show, a weekly show all about options trading. Jenny says her internship on the Cboe trading floor sparked a passion for trading, and she never looked back.
The other half of The LIZ & JNY Show, Liz Dierking, was a finance major at Eastern Illinois University who knew trading was the career for her.
“I talk extremely fast, I walk fast and I eat fast, so I knew the fast-paced environment of the trading floor would be perfect for me,” Liz says. “I didn’t know how I was going to get a job on the trading floor, but I knew it would happen.”
Differently, Liz’s mom found an unmarked envelope at the golf course she worked at with $30,000 inside. The owner of the envelope happened to be an executive at Bear Stearns, a global investment bank. Grateful to Liz’s mom for her good deed, he helped Liz find a job with Bear Stearns, where she kickstarted her journey as a runner in the CBOT’s bond room. She felt like she found her groove with other fast-talking and fast-moving people.
Cathy was about to finish graduate school in Boulder, Colorado when her sister, who worked on the Pacific Stock Exchange, told her to come check out the trading floor for a post-graduation job.
“When I visited the trading floor in San Fransico, I knew I had found my people and place, despite the fact that I had no idea what a put or call was,” Cathy says. “I just knew I needed to be there.”
Eventually, Cathy, Liz and Jenny all started trading at Timber Hill, an innovative market making firm founded by Thomas Peterffy.
“We were lucky to be under the guidance of an ingenious innovator, Thomas Peterffy,” Cathy says. “From the earliest days he envisioned the technological future of trading and brought his vision to the floor.”
Trading evolved just as Cathy’s mentor envisioned, and the original open outcry environment with paper and hand signals turned into electronic trading with advanced technological solutions. Although Cboe uniquely still operates a trading floor, electronic trading is incorporated into the traditional open outcry environment.
Skills That Led to Success
Cathy, Liz and Jenny were all navigating their passions for options trading in a male dominated industry. To be successful on a trading floor, you need a differentiator to stand out, which is the one advantage of being the industry outsider.
“In some ways it was an advantage to be a woman on the trading floor because our voices stood out from the men’s voices and that is what the broker heard,” Cathy says. “Of course, you have to be thick skinned and competitive, keeping up with the environment on the floor.”
Additionally, Jenny was an analytical thinker and able to do quick math in her head.
“In order to get on the ticket, you had to be first,” Jenny says. “I was fast at adding and subtracting fractions right when they would come in and quote a spread, so it was easy for me to get first on the tickets.”
Career Evolution
Over time, careers and interests evolve, taking you in new directions. In 2006, Cathy co-founded Thales, a market making firm on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Options Floor. Eventually, Cathy decided to move to the corporate business development side of the financial industry and over time became the CEO at Livevol, a market data services and trading analytics platform that Cboe acquired in 2015. Since the Livevol acquisition, Cathy has held various leadership positions at Cboe and now leads the company’s global derivatives business and oversees Cboe Data Vantage.
Liz and Jenny transitioned from working on the trading floor to hosting their own show on tastylive, The LIZ and JNY Show. During their live show, which streams from the Cboe trading floor, Liz and Jenny break down the basics of trading options and walk their viewers through tastylive mechanics for portfolio managements. Plus, viewers can ask them questions live on-air or on social media.
Breaking Down Barriers
As retail trading continues to grow, people of all ages and demographics are entering the derivatives trading world. Cathy, Liz and Jenny all note that their children gained interest in the financial markets at a much younger age than they did.
“I didn’t know any 18-year-old who knew what a derivative was when I began in this industry,” Liz says. “Now, my son and his friends know about 0DTE (zero days to expiry) options and are opening investment accounts.”
Education is a crucial part of starting out in the financial industry. Cboe prioritizes access to education through its educational group, The Options Institute.
“Go to Cboe’s Options Institute to start familiarizing yourself with derivatives,” Cathy says. “For 40 years out of Cboe’s 52 years, Cboe has operated an educational arm that is dedicated to empowering people of all levels to learn about the derivatives landscape.”
Whether you started off on a trading floor or are learning about options online, everyone’s careers have their unique beginnings. Cathy, Liz and Jenny boil their advice down to three key points: find your passion, advocate for yourself and keep educating yourself. Stay tuned for Cboe’s Tales of the Tape podcast to hear more from Cathy, Liz and Jenny.
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