Leading Innovation Across All Trading Business Operations

In 2012, Chris managed the grain futures spec and hedge book for Agrex, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi. Along with trading a substantial physical grain position, he also developed a systematic trading strategy for grain futures. He applied this system to corn, soybean, and wheat futures in his time with Agrex, and this strategy still serves as the basis for current strategies Emergent Cybernetics employs across numerous futures markets.

Valero Energy hired Chris in 2015 to trade physical ethanol and to utilize his quantitative skills for building hedging and trading strategies for ethanol, corn and other refined energy products. Chris programmed an automated optimization system for trading physical ethanol along with developing strategic hedging methods for managing commodity risk across all positions.

Through his experience in large-scale grain and energy trading operations, Chris possesses a very unique background as a trader. These opportunities have provided Chris insight of the end-user of physical commodities, along with a strong background in the economics of commodity supply and demand fundamentals. Chris has been able to combine this knowledge with his ability to program trading algorithms and quantitative systems, thereby creating his unique trading approach which establishes his edge in managing risk and developing proprietary trading strategies.

Ben is a 20-year experienced Software Engineer, Systems, Network and Database Administrator, he has vast knowledge of computer systems and technology infrastructure. Ben received his bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas in Industrial Design with a focus on product design, development and human factors. During this time, he dual majored in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

In 2006, XIKAR hired Ben to be the Systems, Network and Database Administrator. In 2008, Ben implemented an Enterprise Resource Planning accounting system, xTuple ERP, for XIKAR to run their entire operations on. Two years later he did a full real-time integration between the ERP system and a third-party fulfillment warehouse.

In 2012, Ben was offered a job by xTuple ERP as a Senior Software Engineer. At xTuple, Ben designed and built their public facing REST API, OAuth 2.0 authentication server and leveraged those to build the xTupleCommerce e-commerce platform. The xTupleCommerce platform is a public facing web portal that is connected in real-time to the back-office ERP system. It allows Products to be published on the website and Sales Order to flow immediately into the ERP system for fulfillment.