• Troy Kane is the global director of derivatives as well as FICC Development at the market maker Citadel Securities.
• Kane started his career in the business earlyworking on in the trading floor at Chicago Board of Trade at 14 years old.
• He explains how he made his way up the ladder through being extremely adaptable focused, organized, and detail-oriented.

Troy Kane got a taste of finance before the majority of people do.

At the age of 14, Kane began working on the floors of trading at the Chicago Board of Trade in 1994, handing out trading orders to brokerages to support his mother’s small clearing service company, and his trading jacket slammed into his knees. Kane quickly realized that he required strong skin to work on the trading floor each summer in high school.

“I think anyone who’s ever worked on a trading floor knows it’s not for the faint of heart,” said the man to Insider during an interview.

“It was a high-intensity environment,” he stated. “If you made a mistake or you were perceived to have made a mistake they would lose their tempers very easily, but it was a great way to learn the business from the ground up.”

In one summer, while Kane was training as a runner one of the traders threw a telephone at Kane’s head after having trouble hearing the name spoken out. After his day, this trader gave Kane $100 as a token of apology.

“Most of the guys were actually super nice.”

He was also determined to be himself and not to rely on his mother if he did make mistakes, which helped him adjust rapidly.

Now, fast forward to the present, Kane, 42, has been Citadel Securities’ global head of derivatives as well as FICC development since the beginning of 2019. He is responsible for the company’s global trading partnerships as well as advocacy on market structure across the options, futures, as well as FICC products, including Fixed income and currencies and commodities. He collaborates with other business leaders throughout the organization to identify opportunities in the new product categories as well as asset types, and to assess where its trading systems can be more efficient.

His extensive experience on trading floors has also made his work afloat. He also assists Citadel Securities partner with investment banks to find possible merger and acquisition potential targets as well as strategic investment opportunities.