Far from Wall Street in a Chicago neighborhood once synonymous with urban blight, two futures industry veterans are using secrecy and speed to mint fortunes.
Their firm, Jump Trading LLC, was all but invisible until it was among six companies subpoenaed in April by New York prosecutors. Jump has ascended the ranks of high-frequency traders during the past 15 years to become one of the top firms on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where $925 trillion of derivatives changed hands last year. Its annual revenue has exceeded half a billion dollars.
The company was founded by traders Bill DiSomma and Paul Gurinas, whose level heads caused them to stand out in the cacophony of a Chicago trading floor. Today, the pair parcel money among 20 or so teams, each guarding its computer models from the others to trade stocks, bonds and commodities with strategies that go almost as fast as light.
