Q. When did you first get involved with the markets?
A. My father loved to trade the markets, although he never made any money at it. Being the oldest of four children, I was enlisted to help him leaf through hundreds of stock charts, looking for some specific types of patterns. My first real involvement in the markets came when I attended Occidental college. The school had a program wherein ten students were selected each year to manage a trust set up by an anonymous donor. My office at Crown Zellerbach was only two blocks away from the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. Since I didn’t have to be at work until 8:30 and the exchange opened at 7:30, I started spending the first hour of my day at the exchange. One trader explained the pricing of options to me and I thought, Gee, I can do that. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be a trader. In fact, some of the best traders whom I knew down on the floor were surf bums. Formal education didn’t really seem to have much to do with a person’s skill as a trader. The person who had explained the basics of the options market to me thought that I’d make a good trader and offered to back me. At the time, I was applying to graduate schools to get an M.B.A. I thought to myself, I can either go to business school to get my M.B.A., or I can trade on the floor of the stock exchange–hmm, which do I want to do? It wasn’t a hard decision.

Please note Raschke was not a Turtle. Her Turtle Soup concept is not accurate.

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