From First Trade to Risk Management: Retail Futures with Ryan Gorman of CME Group

CME Group’s Retail Education Manager Ryan Gorman breaks down how he got into futures, the “aha” moment when trading finally clicked, and why futures can be a powerful tool for access, leverage, and risk management—not just speculation. They also tackle the biggest misconceptions (including physical delivery fears), how liquidity varies by contract/month, and the best first steps for curious traders, from simulators and education hubs to finding one market you genuinely want to learn.

Mary MacNamara  

Hello everybody, and welcome to the Cents of Security podcast. Today we are here with Ryan Gorman, who is the manager of retail education at CME Group. Since he has delved into the futures markets, we’re going to ask him how that came to be. So, Ryan, welcome. How are you?

Ryan Gorman  

Hi. Doing really well. Thank you so much for having me on here, Mary. Super excited to kind of dive in.

Mary MacNamara  

Awesome. So, let’s start at the beginning. What first sparked your interest in financial markets, and how did that eventually lead you to the futures space?

Ryan Gorman  

Yeah, it’s a good question. It kind of goes back to my college days, I got into finance just, in the college days just knowing that I wanted to do something that related to money. I thought it was a good profession overall. And I had some family members that actually worked in the futures industry.

So, I kind of took that and ran with it a little bit. Got, a couple internships working more on the operational side of the futures world. But I got to sit and talk with futures brokers. That’s what really sparked it, was listening to these futures brokers talk on the phone with clients come up with trades, do market analysis.

And I could see kind of right away that I really liked the energy that I felt in these rooms with these traders. And you can kind of see, very quickly how it all kind of connects to the world. When you think about markets like gold or oil or the S&P, the NASDAQ, it’s not local.

It’s very much global, and things that happen in these markets affect all the way from, the very top all the way to the bottom, of the supply chain. So, it really kind of drew me in, being able to see a headline and then look at a market and see a market reaction, and just see how it kind of…

The futures markets really kind of connected the world. Were really– It was really interesting to me. So, I really just dove in from there, and then I was able to kind of parlay that into a few different roles that led me to my role here at CME.

Mary MacNamara  

That’s excellent. I agree. There is definitely an energy in the financial services business, whether, in whatever aspect you’re in. Definitely if you’re in the front lines, and especially if you’re doing research or, trading. So, you studied finance and personal wealth management at, I hope I’m pronouncing this correctly, Loras College?

Ryan Gorman  

Loras College, yes.

Mary MacNamara  

This is in Chicago, right?

Ryan Gorman  

No, that’s out in Dubuque, Iowa. So, it’s just over the border. Yeah, it’s by just past Galena. Just over the Illinois-Iowa border.

Mary MacNamara  

Oh, wow. So almost like in farm country. That’s a little bit north, right?

Ryan Gorman  

Yeah, it’s honestly, it’s pretty much like – straight west. A little bit north, but yeah, right when you cross over a bridge and you’re in Iowa, and you’re in… that’s Dubuque right there.

Mary MacNamara  

Oh, that’s pretty cool. So, at that point, were futures already on your radar or did you just go in general business or something else type of major?

Ryan Gorman  

I started general business. I was a– I really didn’t know what I wanted. I just knew that business, wasn’t a bad option. There was a lot of routes you could do. So, I had accounting on my mind. I had finance. I had, a lot of these different things, marketing. But as I kind of grew into it and learned more about the trading world and I got that first internship, was over at RJ O’Brien actually that’s where I really learned about it.

And it’s one of those things; it wasn’t necessarily taught. We learned about investments through college and but all of it was through the lens of stocks or equities, and there was really nothing about futures, which I thought was crazy being so close to Chicago and not really having an emphasis there.

But it was a smaller school, so I understood. So, I had to kind of do a lot of that myself. But as I kind of progressed and got a little bit older, had these internships, I basically then, right when I was coming out of school, I just got my Series 3, and that’s what really started things. The typical route for what my degree was in, I would say, would be, go get your Series 7, your 66, your 65.

I did the track to go get my CFP, actually, the Certified Financial Planner. But I quickly realized that I was more into, less of that longer term, more of the trading aspect of it. So, it took a lot of kind of just my own interest to go down that avenue.

Mary MacNamara  

Yeah, the internships are really important, I think, because it gets you in the door and you get to see the feel of it. Is this the right place for me, and there’s so many different aspects of it. So that sounds excellent. So, a lot of people first encounter futures as something complex or intimidating.

Do you remember your own aha moment when futures really clicked for you?

Ryan Gorman

For me, it’s really when you start trading. You can learn all you want, and I actually have a family friend of mine who told me this when I was studying for the Series 3. He said, “Just pass that test”. Understand all the ethics and all of the regulations, but just pass that test, and then you’ll really learn how to trade futures.”

And there was a lot of truth to that because all the concepts help, but once you actually hit buy or once you actually hit sell, you can really start seeing how things move. You can learn all day about prices versus ticks when it comes to futures and, every tick in the S&P is $12.50.

All that’s great, and then you have to know what is important to know. But until you’re looking at a P&L screen, that’s really when it kind of clicks for you. And so that was probably it. And I started at a unique time because– So in– when I started at the company I started at was Blue Line Futures.

It was a small introducing broker in Chicago. You can’t make sales calls or trade unless you’re a licensed series three broker. And I graduated and started that role in June of 2020, which was the heart of the pandemic. You couldn’t get into a testing center even. And so, I was scheduled to take all my exams and all of that in March.

That all got canceled. So, I was at– going into the office every day at the Board of Trade in Chicago, and I couldn’t do anything. So, I was just studying for my exam that was, a few weeks into June which was a wild experience. Just the whole city was dead, and the whole building of the Board of Trade, there was nobody in there except the five of us that were in our small little office.

So, once I actually got p-past that exam and I jumped in, it was just a crazy experience. But yeah, it’s really– You have to do it. It’s one of those things that you kind of learn by failing, and you hopefully you can, learn by failing on a smaller scale and have good mentors, which I did.

Mary MacNamara  

Yeah, it’s the same thing. You can’t learn about riding a bike reading about it, or even in fact cooking. You can look at all the recipes you want, but, until you actually go about doing it. And that’s why I think it’s important, I’m just going to do a little plug here on… Interactive Brokers has a paper trading account where you get a certain amount of money, I think it’s like a million dollars of play money, and you can use the platform to, to basically make trades and practice.

I think the CME also has something like that as well some sort of simulator. So anyway, that’s something to keep in mind. Okay. So, you spent several years at Blue Line Futures, which Blue Line Futures is also a contributor to the campus, the Interactive Brokers campus. And you wore a few different hats, sales, brokerage, marketing, strategy, and media.

How did that breadth of experience shape how you think about futures today?

Ryan Gorman  

Yeah. It was a great experience. It was very unique, like I said, starting in the time I started, right in the middle of the pandemic. But the people over there they’re very good at what they do, and they’re very smart. So, I was just a sponge for my first… really the whole time I was there.

But my first year it was more of, “Hey, learn as much as you can. Make as many calls as you can.” We were a little old school, so it was, making a lot of sales calls every day. So, I was on the phone talking with retail traders and that’s the foundation of my role that I’m in now doing education for retail.

I spent the majority of my time that first year, two years there Talking to retail traders, educating them on why they should, one, either simply just trade with us, with our broker, or two, why they should even look at futures. We would talk to retail traders that would trade, just ETFs or, these, gold mining stocks, all these different things, and they might not have ever even thought about futures.

So, I was hammering home, “Hey, you should look at this for X, Y, and Z reason. If you’re trading that, come look at this. It might be a little more cost-effective. It might be more of a pure exposure play on the product that you want to be long or short.” So that was how I got introduced to, CME.

And then I was writing a lot as well through a publication called TradingView, and I was working with representatives at CME, where I would publish these shorter articles on different markets. But yeah, it was more of I just tried to learn as much as I could from people that had been trading for a long time, which there was years of experience on the desk when I showed up.

And it was from all different avenues. It was agricultural markets. It was, S&P, Nasdaq. It was gold. It was crude. There was a wide breadth. So, I really just tried to learn as much as I could. And then that really all parlayed itself into making some relationships here at the exchange and then eventually coming over here to work just simply on the education side, getting away from, the traditional broker and sales role that I was in.

Mary MacNamara  

I love that. And I like that you brought up building those relationships, right? It’s so important in the early part, mid part of your career too.

So, for listeners who mostly think in terms of stocks or ETFs, what makes futures a unique or powerful tool in the markets, in your opinion?

Ryan Gorman  

Yeah. I say this all the time, like when I think about futures, I never want to tell someone just to stop trading equities and go to futures. But futures offer a lot for… and people might just not know what they offer. And I used to hear this a lot. My favorite part of my day was when someone would go, “Oh, wow, I didn’t know that.”

The, some of the biggest ones, it comes down, and this is an evolving subject, but being able to trade outside of traditional market hours is a big one. One thing I learned is that a lot of people that trade futures, they’re not doing it full-time. They have a job. They have a regular job that they go to from, eight to five, nine to five, whatever it is.

But these people, when they wake up at 6:00 AM, they’re looking at their markets. They’re looking at the stocks that they own and, they get home from work at six o’clock at night, they’re looking at the stocks they own, but it’s just hands-off, and there’s not much you can do outside of look.

And through talking to these people, a lot of the times I would say would you like to?” At the very least, have the ability to go in and put a position on. I’ve never wanted to tell people, “Hey, go wake up and trade at three AM.” If you want to, great. But how many times are you sitting at your computer going, “Oh, wow, I would like to sell some here. I’d like to buy a few more here, but now I have to wait till the open tomorrow, and who knows what’s going to happen at the open tomorrow?”

Whereas our markets at the CME are going to be open throughout the night. And then it’s just simply the inherent leverage you get. Like the leverage is, it’s such a strong piece, and if you’re, in these markets and you were looking to day trade and, utilizing the margin, a lot of the times it can be more capitally efficient to look at the futures markets rather than looking at an equity position.

And it might really feel no different to you. You might say, “Hey, I want to trade the S&P and I want more leverage,” and you can come over to our markets, and it might be more efficient for you to do and so understanding those two are the biggest things and it’s the most light bulbs I would see with retail specifically is, “Oh, wow, I can get this kind of exposure pretty much whenever I like it throughout the week, day or night, and I can get that great leverage as well with putting up a little bit less capital,” were definitely the two biggest.

Mary MacNamara  

Liquidity though in the middle of the night or early morning?

Ryan Gorman  

It just depends on the market. If you’re looking at like the S&P, the NASDAQ, gold, oil, these are very liquid markets. Again, it depends also what month you’re looking at. If you go way deferred out month, a year out, and you’re looking at 3 AM at a 12-month-out oil market, who knows?

But if you’re looking at front-month contracts for, we have some of the most liquid markets there are in the world. But it really just depends on market by market. It is something you should look at. But a lot of our markets do have really strong liquidity, even overnight.

Mary MacNamara  

Great. So, you often talk about futures as a risk management tool, not just speculative instruments. Why do you think that part of the story gets overlooked sometimes?

Ryan Gorman

Yeah, I think there’s an inherent fear with futures, which I totally understand because it’s not like a stock where you can buy a share for 100 bucks and that’s the most money you can lose. With a stock, you could buy a share of a stock and close your computer forever.

There’s nothing really you have to worry about, aside from losing what you paid for it. With futures, if you do that, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble because these contracts have expirations. A lot of these futures markets have a settlement that is a physical settlement, whether it’s barrels of oil, whether it’s, agricultural products with bushels of corn or wheat or beans.

So, there’s that fear of, “I don’t want 1,000 barrels of oil showing up in my front yard,” or, “I don’t want to lose more than the $150 I’m willing to invest,” which 100% can happen with futures. But, if you’re the type of person that’s actively managing your markets and your positions and you’re saying, “Hey, I look at this stuff five, six times a day, once a day,” whatever it is, and I just want to be able to say, “Hey, I think the S&P might  you know, drop a little bit here over– in the overnight session. I want to put on, one micro position just in case that happens,” that’s great. And if you’re willing to put in the time and understand how these markets move and understand the risks, it can be very powerful. One of the things that, we might see occasionally is people don’t necessarily understand the risks of the market, and then they’ll go in, buy or sell a contract, and then all of a sudden, bam, the market will rip one way or the other, and you get yourself into trouble.

So, it really starts with education, and that’s why, I’m biased on the education team here. But I always hammer that home. You really have to understand the product. You mentioned looking at simulated trading. That can help a lot too, just to see how when the market moves, it affects your P&L. But if you’re looking at these things, you can really do strong relative value trading and figure out, “Hey, I want to be able to manage X amount of dollars in exposure to the S&P.”

You can do that with the futures markets, as long as you have a good understanding of how they work.

Mary MacNamara  

Education is so key. So, from your experience, what’s the biggest misconception retail traders have about futures markets?

Ryan Gorman

Misconception, that’s a good question. I do think it’s the general, Probably the one is the, I’m going to get 1,000 barrels of oil showing up on my front yard. Now, these markets do have physical settlements. If you’re looking at grains, oil, like I mentioned, a lot of these markets are physically settled.

I’m sure you know with Interactive Brokers and all these brokers around the globe, if you’re actively trading in a market that’s going to expire… Now, I don’t want to speak for Interactive Brokers or any of these firms, but they are going to be calling you, texting you, emailing you, blowing up your phone if you’re in these as they’re coming up on expiration.

And a lot of these brokers, they might just blow you out of your position at that point if it’s a physically delivered contract and just say, “Hey, it’s not worth it to us to have that risk,” and it’s definitely not worth it to you as an individual trader with %5,000, $10,000 in your account to take this into delivery.

And there’ll be established guidelines in all the different brokers’ front-end systems on how that works. But that’s why it’s so important to know. But I do think that happens way less and because different brokers like Interactive Brokers have gotten out in front and said, “Hey, if you get to X point before these markets are going to expire and we’re going to come up on delivery, we are going to take action on your behalf if you are not taking action.”

But trust me, you’re going to get calls and emails over and over again looking for you to do something about your position, either to roll it, cut it, whatever it may be.

Mary MacNamara  

So, if someone is listening here today and is curious about this, but hesitant to dive in, what do you suggest is the first educational step that you recommend?

Ryan Gorman

Of course, I’m going to talk about the CME’s educational system first. What I’ll say is, though there’s courses that goes from what are futures to, “Hey, here’s an advanced options strategy.” It’s really great. There are quiz questions. There’s all this stuff along with that, we have a brand spanking new, really nice-looking trading simulator that really does feel like a strong front-end system.

That’s very new. A lot of people on the team, including myself, did some good work on it, so it’s very great, and I recommend checking it out. But outside of just the plug for the company, go to YouTube and just type in, “I’m interested in futures. How do I get into this?” There will be thousands and thousands of free materials of just everyday retail traders who started in the same position as you.

“Hey, I have five grand, and I want to trade some micro futures. How do I do it?” There are unlimited videos to do that. There are live streams, there’s everything. And then from there, once you have the basics, what I always say is figure out a market that you’re interested in because you have to want to trade this.

So, if it’s, maybe it’s right now with oil going a little bit crazy, maybe you want to play in the oil market. Maybe it’s gold. Maybe you’re very interested in what, how the Fed’s actions dictate the price of the dollar versus gold and silver. Maybe it’s interest rates. Figure out what you like and try to really home in on that, because from there you can learn all of the fundamental drivers about that market using resources like I mentioned with CME. I know Interactive Brokers has great resources and then go to YouTube and learn how these markets move, and then you can really dive into the technical side of things. And once you learn the technical side of things, then you can look at really any market, because that you can overlay across markets looking at different moving averages and things.

But I, like I said I think looking at CME does it in a great way, but outside of that and using Interactive Brokers, I use YouTube all the time if I need to learn something on the fly, and I want to learn it from the perspective of somebody that’s in my shoes. So, of the perspective of somebody that came from retail, who came from not having an understanding.

It really can make it a lot more valuable and easier to learn, in my view.

Mary MacNamara  

Yeah, it’s amazing what you can learn online with these short videos. And some of them are entertaining too. So, this has been great. Thank you so much, Ryan for joining our podcast today. And it’s so good to hear about all your experience.

And we can only wish you many great successes at the CME Group and, obviously with your life and everything. Also, on the Traders Academy campus at Interactive Brokers, we have numerous CME courses and also, Introduction to futures with study notes, quizzes links and so forth.

And also, you can check out the contributors who also do market commentary on the futures market. Ryan, thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Ryan Gorman

I love doing work with Interactive Brokers, so really appreciate you having me on.