How hard work and embracing change helped Avery Putter make this transition
Experienced Softs and Agricultural Commodities Options Broker, Avery Putter has evolved and delivered time and again throughout his career. Getting his start in the summer of 1992, fresh out of high school, Avery was invited by a family friend to visit the commodities trading floor in the World Trade Center. It was destiny for Avery as he recalls:
I remember the day as if it were yesterday. I was a kid and was very excited to have the opportunity to go onto the exchange floor. When the elevator doors opened, I heard the roar coming from the exchange floor. It was the sound of brokers trading commodity futures. When I walked onto the floor, I knew this was where I belonged. That first time walking onto that floor was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
Avery got his start as a runner on the trading floor that year and over time his hard work and drive to succeed to pay off. He found his calling when he purchased a seat and became a member of the Exchange in 1997. Then, disaster struck on September 11, 2001. With the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, everything changed for Avery, and he found himself in recovery mode. The exchange moved to a disaster recovery site located in Long Island City, NY. Although the future of the exchange looked very bleak at the time, Avery started his own floor operation, Putter Trading Corp. After a year of adaptation and some hardship, the trading floor he worked on moved to the New York Mercantile Building. The New York Board of Trade was once again open for business. Avery continued his successes of old and the seven years that followed found himself on the upswing once more.
A wave of change was approaching Avery Putter’s business, however, with the buyout deal of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) over the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT). Avery and his fellow members of the exchange did not anticipate the change happening so quickly. The floor community was informed that (ICE) was planning to keep future pits open, and their electronic platform would coexist with the current markets. There was a prerequisite, however. If the trading volume exceeded a certain threshold on the screen vs. the pit, the exchange would close the trading pits. Reality sunk in and in 2008 the futures markets went entirely electronic. Many great people, including Avery, were out of business. He had to start fresh once more.
In 2009 Avery found the future of his business. Avery’s friend Alfred from the (NYMEX) floor convinced him to see what he was doing. After sitting down with his friend for seven months brokering natural gas options off the floor via instant message, Avery seized the opportunity to learn valuable lessons about negotiating futures and options off the floor. Avery saw this as the future of the business. It was now only a matter of time before he would discover how to broker soft commodities this way.
A never-ending work ethic paid off, and in July 2010, Avery Putter found himself as the newest member of Spectron Energy Inc. Spectron had a strong knowledge of Avery’s 18 years of commodity experience and his skills in brokering energy products off the floor. Avery convinced Spectron that opening a floor operation for options on the ICE floor would put them in a position to be successful. Spectron agreed and put Avery to work as the head of their soft and agricultural commodity floor operation. It was a great fit for both sides.
By September that same year, the floor operation for Spectron officially launched, and Avery Putter executed 15,000 option contracts in his first month. He had another smashing month in February of 2011 where he executed 35,000 contracts combined. With the evolution of exchange rules and a steadily growing customer base, he successfully brokered options on pre-negotiated contracts often, and everything he had set out to achieve was coming to fruition. Evolutionary styles, as often are the case, can be seen as a threat, however, and in Avery’s case, his skills were looked upon disapprovingly by some. The trading floor was closed by (ICE) in December 2012. This time Avery was ready this time, and he parted ways from Spectron to join up with Sweet Futures 1, LLC.
In 2013, Avery joined Sweet Futures. Avery and Ian Sweet were very optimistic that value could be added brokering livestock option markets traded on the CME Exchange in Chicago. CME had the policy in place that allowed these contracts to be pre-negotiated and executed off the floor. Even though no one was doing it at the time, Avery saw the perfect opportunity to add value for his clients. With Ian’s knowledge of the livestock industry and Avery’s understanding of brokering options, the relationship has been fruitful.