WH Trading

WH Trading began in a small office directly above the Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor, where Will Hobert started it in 1994 amid the shouting of open outcry. Its second employee, Alvin Dodek, came not from a pit but from intellectual property law. Three decades on, the firm has made the full crossing from floor to screen without ever taking outside money.

Every dollar of capital comes from the partners, and every dollar of revenue comes from trading: no clients, no funds. WH provides liquidity in futures and options across US, European, and Asian markets, spanning interest rates, equity indexes, FX, agricultural commodities, and energy, on an ultra-low-latency network built for the electronic era it grew into. One human footnote: a former employee, Jahmal Cole, left to found the Chicago nonprofit My Block, My Hood, My City, which the firm helped get off the ground.