Providio Trading Consultants, Inc.
is an Introducing Broker in the Futures industry.

We were incorporated in Illinois in February of 2000.

We service the needs of experienced traders, assist new traders
in learning about Futures and how to trade them and provide
hedging services to business and individuals with price exposure
in listed commodity and financial futures contracts.

Edge-n. 5. 'A margin of superiority; an advantage'
~ American Heritage Dictionary

Trading futures, by its very nature, encourages the pursuit of an edge.
Individual traders usually try to obtain this advantage by addressing three
major issues: timing, transaction costs, and information access - we believe
they are missing the point.

Professional traders and money managers address one other crucial issue
before they even enter a trade: "What if I am wrong?"

This is risk management. By starting with it, they have already prepared themselves for a loss. Their use of risk management up front helps them
avoid the emotionally and financially devastating effects of catastrophic
losses - this is the professional trader's real edge.

While timing is the basis of all trading systems, it is never infallible. Even the advertising for many trading systems express their effectiveness in percentage terms. These percentages acknowledge the fact that systems will be wrong. If they can be wrong, they can be very wrong. Risk management allows a system to be very wrong without necessarily wiping out your trading account.

Many traders have also attempted to shrink transaction costs by obtaining
direct floor access, exploiting the speed of the Internet and electronic order
entry, and paring commission rates to the absolute minimum. While these
efforts do have an effect on a trading account's performance, they are strictly
limited and tend to be very small. Every trade has implied transaction costs in
addition to their commissions and fees. Losses are one of those costs. As the
largest portion of transaction costs, they deserve the most attention. Risk
management focuses a trader's efforts on minimizing these costs.

Individual traders have also tried to get 'the edge' with live audio or streaming
quotes, real-time news services, and other information and data sources.
These are tools used to make trading decisions. Trading decisions are informed
opinions about the market's direction. Emotions can often influence these
opinions. By limiting losses, risk management can prevent trade decisions from
being negatively influenced by irrational emotions.

So how can you possibly get 'the edge' in the futures markets,
where the cards often seem to be stacked against you?

We feel that professional traders and money managers approach it best.
They make risk management the centerpiece of their trading program and
recognize its impact on their performance. We do not underestimate the
importance of timing, transaction costs and access to information. However,
you cannot consistently control these factors.

• You control which markets you trade.
• You control how many contracts you trade.
• You control where to set your stop loss.

I started my Futures career in 1982 as runner on the floor of
the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. As the years passed, and I
progressed to running a currency desk and then completed
college, the world changed dramatically. The US and global
economies changed, the global political landscape changed,
and our markets changed. We have more products, electronic
trading, participation by more and larger institutions, mergers of
exchanges, and more attention from the media to name a few.

One subject that has remained the same is the paramount
importance of risk or money management in trading. The bottom
line is, risk management allows for failure of trades, but seeks to
prevent the failure of those trades from becoming catastrophic to
the trader's equity.

After I graduated from college, I went to work for a discount
brokerage firm. I started seeing trading results in real dollar terms
as opposed to just executing trades on the floor at the CME. I
started paying attention to the issue of risk and how it affected
trading results.

Years later, as I was developing my skills as a broker, I was
intrigued when I read comments by some of the top traders in
the world. Several stated that risk management was by far the
most important issue in trading. One said it was responsible for
as much as 90% of the success of a trading system. This sparked
more curiosity about this subject.

While I was a Risk Manager for a small firm, I spent a significant
amount of time watching traders and what they did right or
wrong. I kept coming back to the issue of risk management
and used my experience to develop my brokerage style.

To state it simply, I believe the single greatest service I can
provide my clients is to keep reminding them of this issue and
to try to get them to automatically incorporate it into their
trading decision making. Further, I believe getting traders to
acknowledge the importance of addressing risk and coupling it
with a disciplined and systematic approach to their trading is the
key to having a chance of trading success.

I started implementing this brokerage style in January 2000 when
I started what has become Providio Trading.