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The Options Industry Council (OIC) today announced Blair Hull as recipient of the 2014 Joseph W. Sullivan Options Industry Achievement Award. This award is given annually to one individual in recognition of outstanding contributions to the U.S. options industry throughout his or her career. The 2014 Sullivan Award will be presented at the 32nd Annual Options Industry Conference to be held April 30 – May 2, in Austin, TX.
Blair Hull’s career in the trading world has spanned almost 40 years. Throughout his career, Mr. Hull has received industry-wide recognition for his achievements as an innovator, market maker and skilled investor. In his current role, Mr. Hull is managing partner of Ketchum Trading, a proprietary trading firm that he founded in Chicago in 2010. Ketchum Trading is a technology-driven trading firm that makes markets and trades in options, futures and ETFs.
Prior to his work at Ketchum Trading, Mr. Hull was the chairman and CEO of Hull Trading Company, a Chicago-based trading firm that he founded in 1985. Under Mr. Hull’s direction, Hull Trading Company was a global leader in advancing the use of technology in listed derivatives trading and operated on 26 exchanges in nine countries. Mr. Hull and his team at Hull Trading Company are most recognized for developing a proprietary and large-scale, reliable distributed system architecture, providing automatic real-time pricing; risk management; market making; and interconnection with automated options, futures and stock exchanges. Mr. Hull’s latest project, Hull Tactical Asset Allocation (HTAA), was launched just last year. HTAA uses advanced algorithms and macro and technical indicators to anticipate future S&P 500® returns.
Mr. Hull has also served on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Board Options Exchange from 1988 to 1990 and The Options Clearing Corporation from 1992 to 1998. In addition to his many achievements in the options industry, he has also taken interest in social outreach through the Hull Family Foundation, a grant-making institution that he started with his children in 1999.
Blair Hull earned his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from the University of California, Santa Barbara; his MBA from Santa Clara University; and graduated from the Harvard OPM Program.
Past recipients of the Sullivan Award include: Joseph Sullivan himself, Wayne Luthringshausen, Paul Stevens, Ivers Riley, Thomas Peterffy, Jeffrey Yass, David Krell, Bill Brodsky, Bill Porter, Larry McMillan, Ed Joyce, and Meyer "Sandy” Frucher.
