Jon "DRJ" Najarian was linebacker for the Chicago Bears before he turned to another kind of contact sport – trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
He became a member of the CBOE, NYSE, CME and CBOT and worked as a floor trader for some 25 years.
In 1990 he founded Mercury Trading, a market-making firm at the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), which he sold in 2004 to Citadel, one of the world's largest hedge funds.
During that time Jon developed the Heat Seeker™ algorithm and framework used to identify unusual activity in stock, options and futures. He still uses it to this day to identify unusual option activity on CNBC.
In 2005, Najarian co-founded, together with his brother Pete, optionMONSTER, an options news and education firm, and tradeMONSTER, a leading online brokerage firm, that for years has been rated "Best for Options Traders" by Barron's and was the first online broker to deploy streaming, desktop-like trading in a web browser. Jon and Pete took on private equity firm General Atlantic Partners as a partner in 2014, ultimately selling TradeMonster to E*Trade for $750 million in 2016.
Today Jon is a professional investor and market analyst, who publishes his market observations and trade ideas on Investitute.com, his financial education and newsletter services company. Over the years he has authored four best-selling books on trading and options.
Jon co-founded Najarian Advisors & Najarian Family Office that advises or trades for institutional investors and provides money management for wealthy investors.
As an active investor and member of the Crypto community Jon works to bring awareness of Cryptocurrencies, Tokens and US Equities through roadshows and conferences throughout the US, Europe and Asia. He has delivered keynotes for The NYSE, Euromoney, Institutional Investor, TokenFest, Blockchain Shift & HighTower Advisers. He also is the co-founder of TCB Productions LLC, a production company for television programs and movies.
What does Jon Najarian do when he's not investing? Here's a look in our Halftime Report "Trade Off."
Follow Jon on Twitter: @jonnajarian
Disclosures as of 10/17/18:
Long calls: Alcoa Domestic, Activision Blizzard, Alcoa Corp, Ally Financial, Amazon, Applied Materials, Autodesk, Axalta, Baker Hughes, Boeing, Cabot Oil & Gas, Coating Systems, Conagra Brands, Constellation Brands, Cypress Semiconductor, Delta Air Lines, Diamond Offshore Drilling, Diamondback Energy, Discovery, eBay, Energy Transfer Equity, EXACT Sciences, Facebook, Freeport-McMoRan, Gilead Sciences, Government Properties Income, TrustHilton Worldwide, Honeywell, International Game Tech, John Deere, Macy's, Masco, MGM, Microsoft, Mohawk Industries, Net Element, NXP Semiconductors, Royal Caribbean Cruises, Six Flags, Snap Inc., SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF, Square, Stitch Fix, Target, Tata Motors, TechnipFMC, Tesla, Tilray, United Health Group, United Sony, States Oil Fund, Weyland Tech, WPX Energy.
Long stock: Apple, Papa John's Pizza, Tesla, Tilray, U.S. Auto Parts.
