How did Nick Kokonas get his first job on the Chicago trading floor?

Nick Kokonas, a philosophy major, wanted to be a floor trader rather than take a salaried bank job, so he removed his college education from his resume to get hired as a runner at $5.25 an hour. He moved up to phone clerk, took open outcry classes after the close, and offered to pay a quant-minded trader to work for him. About a year after starting, he was trading Swiss franc options with $60,000.

• Kokonas put up $20,000 of the starting stake and a backer put up $40,000.
• The trader he chose as a mentor paid him about $250 a week instead of taking his money.
• Kokonas later trained 30 to 40 traders under a rule that each had to make one trade on their first day in the pit.

▸In their words

“So I had to fake my resume in the wrong direction in order to get the runner job.” Nick Kokonas · at 13:45 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on My First Million (2026-10-26). Read the whole episode summary →

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