“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” This is a favorite Niccolo Machiavelli quote. The company one keeps is a great insight into the type of person they are­­.

I have been servicing the buy side community as an institutional equity sales trader for more than two decades. Most recently, I was Director of Institutional Sales and Trading at The Benchmark Company. I was at Benchmark for more than 15 years and learned much in my tenure there.

I pride myself in providing high-touch trading services for my clients. I do so by maintaining open dialogue with everybody on the investing chain, from equity traders to research analysts to portfolio managers. Knowing how a particular customer likes to be serviced is a key element of a productive relationship.

I love a good challenge. I have a finance degree from George Washington University and a law degree from Touro College. I went to law school for the academic challenge more than anything and ended up practicing in New York and New Jersey only for while before I transitioned to finance. I never looked back.

PANARAY© is a service I respect because I know it works. It can be a full, stand alone research platform or a tool used to enhance an existing research product. It’s not a crystal ball, but for those of us who are inclined to learn it and work the O’Neil Methodology, it’s unparalleled in its versatility. There’s no way you won’t find it to be something worth the investment—both time and money.

If you have a problem, I’m your guy. I’m very handy around the house and have become the local fix-it guy for my neighbors. It started with a single kind gesture and took on a life of its own. I do have an awesome set of tools now though.

People often tell me that I should open up my own restaurant. Cooking is something I am passionate about and you can tell by my arsenal of kitchen tools and gadgets. I would love to take a cooking class to refine my skill, but until then, the Food Network serves as a great source of inspiration for me and my 14-year-old daughter who also loves to cook.

Cooking has led me to my other hobby: running. Truth be told, I might just run for the sole purpose of being able to eat everything my daughter and I cook!

I’m excited to be part of the William O’Neil Securities team. We have a team of smart and highly driven people dedicated to providing our clients best execution.

I have my BS and my MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business. I first became interested in the stock market when I was working on my undergrad. It was a Tuesday when I approached one of my professors about exploring equities as a career path. By 6am Friday of that week, I was reporting for work on the floor of the AMEX.

Before I joined William O’Neil Securities, I was at Barclays for 11 years. I was at JP Morgan Chase and Bear Stearns before that. All in all, I have more than 20 years of institutional sales trading experience in foreign and domestic markets.

The access we have to the William O’Neil + Co. suite of research is invaluable. PANARAY and the daily market commentaries provide insight on international and domestic markets and stocks that help with day-to-day stock picking and longer-term positioning.

Family is important to me. My wife and I have been married for 22 years. We have two sons and one daughter. I also have five brothers and sisters.

Traveling helps keep our family connected. My wife is from Holland and we visit every year or two. Most recently, we visited family in Holland and stopped in Iceland on the way back.

I enjoy playing golf with friends and family. It’s a lifelong sport that gives us an opportunity to spend quality time together.

I also like to garden and cook, so farm-to-table is a lifestyle.

I’m excited to be a part of the William O’Neil Securities family because of the seasoned sales traders I get to work alongside, O’Neil’s solid reputation in the financial world, and the differentiated methodology and robust suite of services.

If you don’t change, you get left behind. As the financial services industry evolves, it’s important to constantly evaluate and innovate. From chart books to PANARAY®, the evolution of the services at O’Neil tells a story.

While most firms follow a strictly fundamental approach, William O’Neil + Co.’s blend of technical and fundamental analysis allows money managers to optimize both entry and exit points.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m going to pick up the phone to call you. To provide the best service and added value to my clients, I think it’s important to understand your clients’ needs and the services you are offering. The only way to do that is to be diligent.

I hope that you’ll consider me your go-to sales trader. I believe that the most important thing is trust. I’m the type of person who stands behind my convictions.

As cliché as it sounds, time flies. Now that my kids are older, I value the times that we do get to spend together even more. My wife and I have one daughter and twin boys. We recently took a family trip to London, where my son is studying abroad, and to Dublin. We had more fun than I thought was possible!

I’m a numbers guy, so naturally I’ve always had an interest in finance. At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, it came down to either majoring in finance or engineering and I ultimately chose to study finance. Either way, I would have ended up being the diehard Wisconsin Badgers fan that I am.

I worked in finance right out of the gate. After college, I worked in fixed income at CIBC Oppenheimer and then as an OTC market maker at Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, which was acquired by Goldman Sachs.

From Pali Capital to The Benchmark Company, and now William O’Neil Securities, my main goal has always been to anticipate my clients’ needs to provide the very best service and ideas. Some of my client relationships are nearly two decades long.

I’ve always been fascinated by stock movements and charts, so O’Neil’s differentiated approach, that I first learned about from reading IBD in college, is appealing because of its focus on the quantitative and technical aspects of stock movements. With the institutional equity sales landscape evolving, you need a differentiated service and a proven methodology, like O’Neil’s, to help your clients get a leg up.

My first boss used to say, “Wall Street is a series of up and down cycles. The main goal is to protect your capital. Weather the downtrends and capitalize on the uptrends.”  This has stuck with me throughout the years.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre is one of my favorite books. It’s a great read about discipline, rules, and hard work, which are important in our industry—no matter your investing methodology.

I learned the value of hard work from a young age. My parents emigrated from Greece to New York. They became successful small business owners who worked tirelessly seven days a week, without any vacation time throughout my childhood. Their efforts instilled in me a strong work ethic that I hope is now a model for my three young boys.

I love watching, playing, and coaching sports. There is nothing I enjoy more than coaching my sons’ teams and watching them develop a love of many different sports like I did.  Of course, yearly trips back to Wisconsin for a football game are a must.

The best sales traders are great at creating synergies as a business evolves. Before William O’Neil Securities, I was Managing Director at The Benchmark Company since 2002, where I helped grow the firm from six employees to over 100. I’ve taken that broad experience along with my knowledge of market movements and securities pricings to add value to my clients.

There is hidden value in tedious tasks. I had a summer internship at a buy-side consumer retail fund, where my sole responsibility was to research malls and stores, analyze customer traffic flow, and write reports based on my findings for portfolio managers. Although it seemed tedious at the time, it gave me insightful knowledge about valuations, developed my attention to detail, and provided me access to top sell-side analysts.

I was attracted to working in the financial markets because I knew it would be a good fit for my personality. I have an aptitude for numbers and analysis and I thrive in a fast-paced environment that constantly challenges you to synthesize a number of pieces of information at the same time.

Economics is the fundamental backdrop that everything in our line of work is based upon. That’s why I studied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. To deepen my knowledge, I went on to get my MBA in finance from Fordham University.

Getting a wide variety of experiences gives you perspective. I didn’t always work in finance. My first job out of college was negotiating photography licensing agreements at a stock photography house where I was exposed to the creative industry. Even though it might seem unrelated, decades later, the experience I gained is still relevant in the business we do now—negotiating value, making markets, building relationships.

At a time when research is being commoditized, William O’Neil Securities offers a differentiated approach. As a sales trader, you’re always looking for a way to give your clients an advantage and I know PANARAY™ is going to create a tailwind for my clients.

I adore my family. I met my wife at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1991 and we’ve been together ever since. We have three kids, two daughters and one son.

Forget material goods. It’s the experiences that are priceless. My wife and I have made it a point to travel internationally to provide our kids with the opportunity to experience different cultures. We have been to the Caribbean Islands, Spain, Paris, London, Amsterdam, and more. We loved riding bikes through Amsterdam and are looking forward to our adventures in Rome and Tuscany.

If I wasn’t working in finance, I’d be a coach. I’ve been told that I have a knack for teaching and the patience for it. My kids play soccer, basketball, and baseball and I love serving as a mentor to them and their peers. There’s nothing more rewarding.