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 7/19/19:
Long calls: 3M, Ally Financial, At Home Group, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Callon Petroleum Company, Caterpillar Inc, Carvana Co., Cenovus Energy, CSX Corporation, Dropbox, D.R. Horton, EBAY, Enphase Energy, EQT Corporation, Equitrans Midstream Corp, Facebook, Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund, Freeport-McMoRan Inc, Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund, Hilton Grand Vacations, JB Hunt Transport Services, JD.com, Juniper Networks, KeyCorp, L Brands, Marathon Petroleum Corporation, Micron Technology, Microsoft, Molina Healthcare, Mylan, Net Element, Netflix, Newell Co, Nordstrom, Overstock.com, PayPal, Roku, Salesforce.com, Skechers USA, Snap Inc., SPDR Gold Trust, Square Inc, SSR Mining Inc., Summit Materials Inc, Target, Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg., Tesla, The Walt Disney Company, U.S. Steel, VanEck Vectors Gold Miners Index ETF, Walgreens, Weyland Tech, WW International+.
Owns puts: SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF
Long stock: Apple, Facebook, U.S. Auto Parts.
