Larry Benedict

Larry Benedict is CEO of The Opportunistic Trader and has over thirty years of experience as an investment professional. In 1984, he began his career as a market maker in equity derivatives products on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. Later, Mr. Benedict worked as a market maker on the American Stock Exchange and, in 1989, was hired by Spear Leeds & Kellogg (SLK) as their options specialist in the XMI Major Market Index on the American Stock Exchange. From 1992 to 1995, he managed the off-floor derivative index trading at SLK. In 1995, Mr. Benedict became a Managing Director of the newly created proprietary trading department of SLK. During this time period, he became a Special Limited Partner of the organization. After the Goldman Sachs purchase of SLK in 2000, Mr. Benedict took the opportunity to launch Banyan Equity Management, LLC. Banyan was a short term discretionary trading hedge fund firm which managed client assets in excess of $900mm and was a recipient of Barrons top 100 hedge funds on numerous occasions. He was featured in the popular trading book series, "Market Wizards, Hedge Fund How Winning Traders Win" (2012).