About Your Traders

James Cordier

James Cordier is President and Head Trader of Liberty Trading Group in Tampa, Florida. With over 20 years of trading experience, he is quoted regularly on the futures markets in several national and international publications including the Wall Street Journal, Barrons, Forbes, CNN Money and Dow Jones Newswires. He is a regular guest analyst on CNBC, Bloomberg Television and Fox Business News.

Mr. Cordier and his firm specialize in option writing and have developed a strategy of selling out of the money options on futures contracts that they share with clients of their brokerage.

Mr. Cordier manages portfolios for private clients on six continents and hosts his own website www.OptionSellers.com.

James' study of the commodities market began at age 14 when a silver coin collection sparked his interest in silver futures. He began his career at Heinold Commodities in Milwaukee as a broker in 1984. Several years of working with commercial business enabled him to not only build a solid knowledge base of market fundamentals but also establish of network of producers and end users that remains in place today.

After nearly a decade in the industry, James began to notice that many of his investors who bought options tended to see them expire worthless. Seeking better returns for his clients, he began a study of institutional trading strategies which led him to the concept of selling options. By the late 1990's, Cordier had many of his clients actively utilizing the strategy.

It was during this time that James began to evolve as a "go to" source for the national financial media in need of informed insight into the fundamentals of commodities markets such as gold, oil and coffee.

In 1999, having established a solid reputation and a certain level of notoriety within the industry, James founded Liberty Trading Group, an Investment firm specializing exclusively in Selling Options.

In 2003, he was approached by McGraw-Hill publishing to write a book about his investment method. This eventually became The Complete Guide to Option Selling (First Edition)

James has been a member in good standing of the National Futures Association since 1984 and boasts an impeccable record of ethical conduct.

Despite giving market commentary to news outlets and financial websites and co-authoring The Complete Guide to Option Selling 2nd Edition (McGraw-Hill 2009), James still works directly with his private client group of investors and never underestimates the importance of staying in close contact with his clientele' on an individual basis.

Michael Gross

Michael Gross is director of research at Liberty Trading Group in Tampa, Florida.

After graduating from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1990 with a degree in Business Administration, he began his study of the commodities markets. His futures trading career began in 1994 when he started trading contracts in grains, precious metals and energies.

In 1996, Michael became a registered commodities broker specializing primarily in the grain and energy sectors.

In 1999, he joined Liberty Trading Group where along with James Cordier, developed various approaches to selling option premium and managing portfolios. Michael remains an active broker at Liberty Trading Group, where he authors many of the firm's research articles and assists in developing trading strategy.

Michael's published articles on option trading have appeared on MarketWatch, Optionetics.com, Futures Magazine and Yahoo Finance. His market comments are published regularly by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Reuters World News. He co-authored the book The Complete Guide to Option Selling (1st and 2nd Editions) with James Cordier.

Michael has been a member of the National Futures Association since 1996.