Richard Erkes - My Background

I have worked in the securities and commodities business for my entire working life.  It must have been a while ago, because my first employer was the original E.F. Hutton and Co. and they sent me to New York, for one year, to train as a securities broker.  I moved from doing straight brokerage to become the Midwest Director of Research for a NYSE company.  From there, I was invited to become the manager of a small investment partnership investing in U.S. securities.  Later the Chicago Board Options Exchange opened for business in Chicago and I was a charter member of the exchange.

I found a home on the trading floor.  Acting on my own behalf as an independent trader, I plied my trade, as a member, on other local exchanges such as the CME, MSE and the Chicago Options Exchange, for many years.  This was a period of dramatic growth for Chicago based futures and options markets.  I retired from those pursuits to learn about off the floor and computer based trading, an area of work where I remain to this day.

Among my current activities I have come to serve as a Director and Program Chair for the Los Angeles chapter of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII).  It is in that capacity that I became acquainted with the SectorSurfer program.  This affordable program levels the field for individual investors versus the big financial powerhouses.

Essentially, SectorSurfer allows individuals to employ big data to filter mutual funds and ETFs (see my last blog for more information regarding ETFs) and choose those with the best momentum for personal investing.  SectorSurfer University is our educational effort to assist individuals in using this high-powered tool.  Currently, I am full time involved with SectorSurfer Unversity.