Management Team
Oliver L. Velez
Chief Executive Officer
Oliver L. Velez, best selling author, world-renowned trader, advisor, and entrepreneur, is one of the most sought after speakers and teachers on the subject of trading financial markets for a living. His seminars and speaking events have been attended by more than 90,000 traders all over the world, and his runaway best selling books, “Strategies for Profiting on Every Trade” and “Tools and Tactics of the Master Day Trader,” are considered must-read classics for anyone interested in trading markets for a living. Dow Jones dubbed him “the messiah of day trading” and financial programs on CNBC, CBS and Fox News frequently seek out his expertise. Mr. Velez and his life-long dedication to bringing more awareness to trading as a way of life have been favorably mentioned in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Forbes, Stocks & Commodities and a whole host of other financial publications. He has also been the subject of numerous articles and books written about Wall Street's most successful traders, including the popular books, Bulls, Bears and Brains and The Guts & Glory of Day Trading.
Oliver L. Velez is internationally known for founding and growing Pristine Capital Holdings, Inc. (a firm he started out of his New York City basement apartment) into one of the country's premier educational institutions for investors and self-directed, retail traders. In recent years, Mr. Velez decided to turn his full attention to the professional trading arena. His new training program called Trade for LifeTM, which includes a 2-day seminar and a 5-day Live Trading Session with Mr. Velez himself, is designed to train traders to go beyond retail to trade the markets professionally for a living.
Mr. Velez heads up Velez Capital Management, LLC ("VCM"), one of the country's fastest growing private trading firms. VCM currently employs 1400+ professional traders who have been meticulously trained to trade his own personal account. Mr. Velez financially backs each one of his traders, absorbing all their losses, while sharing in the gains with the trader. Mr. Velez's vision is to grow his professional team of traders to more than 3,000 globally over the next 2 years. For the past 16 years, he has espoused the revolutionary idea that "micro trading," like "micro banking" has the potential to serve as a solution to many of the world's social ills. Through VCM, the Velez Family Foundation and several other major companies, Mr. Velez will be opening up trading divisions and training centers in South East Asia and Brazil in 2008. More major cities throughout the world will be added in 2009.
Mr. Velez is the author of the recently released best-selling DVD entitled, 5 Trading Tactics That Beat the Market and his newest book, Swing Trading with Oliver Velez, a course book complete with DVD. He is also the author of the soon to be released Trade for LifeTM Book Series and the much anticipated McGraw Hill published book entitled 26 Lessons from the Master Trader, due in bookstores late 2008.
Charles Vaccaro
President
Charles has been involved in the direct trading business for the last 12 years. In 1996, he founded a broker-dealer called F1 Trading, a retail online direct access broker dealer for self directed independent day traders. In a short period of time, he grew this business to over 500 traders with 6 branch offices. After the downturn of the industry in 2001, Charles switched his focus to proprietary trading. He founded HLV trading in 2002, specifically for this purpose and quickly grew his team to over 100 proprietary traders, with 5 trading offices including 2 international locations.
As he grew the firm, Charles wanted to offer an educational side of the industry to further increase the audience. So in Feb 2007, he partnered up with Oliver Velez to form Velez Capital Management. Charles brought his experience of managing proprietary trading firms while Oliver Velez brought his 14 years of experience as CEO of Pristine Capital Holdings, Inc, a securities educational firm, he formed in 1994.
Along with Oliver Velez, Charles oversees the entire business while primarily focusing on the financial aspects. Charles manages the independent traders group, handles strategic alliances and acquisitions, and co-ordinates smooth operations of trading executions. Charles and Oliver have a shared vision, to take VCM to the pinnacle of the educational experience for prop traders.
Paul Lange
Vice President of Services
Paul graduated from Roosevelt University in Chicago in 1983 with a bachelor’s degree in Finance/Management, and from The John Marshall Law School in 1987 with a Juris Doctor degree. He spent several years in management and then ran his own business for six years, which he sold in 1997. He then spent a year trading options and finally in 1998 began day trading full time.
In 1999 Paul became a student of Oliver Velez. He spent the years from 1999 until 2007 helping train traders at the first company co-founded by Oliver Velez, Pristine Capital holdings, Inc. He has privately mentored over 95 students and taught hundreds through seminars, DVDs, and in virtual trading chat rooms.
Paul joined Oliver in 2007 at Velez Capital Management, LLC to head up the Services division and the VCM Research department. He is the head moderator of the VCM Proprietary Trading Room and the Chief Editor of the Trade for LifeTM Daily Newsletter and its Intra-day Alert service.
Malcolm Murray
Vice President of Trader Education
Malcolm earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with Distinction in psychology from Swarthmore College and a Master of Sciences degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin. After a successful twenty year career in healthcare administration, with over 35 publications and presentations in the field, he has been a professional trader in securities for over seven years.
During much of this period, Malcolm served as a certified instructor for Pristine Capital Holdings, Inc. under Oliver Velez, providing instruction to hundreds of traders in technical analysis techniques. He is the author of seminars in managing a trading business and trading e-mini futures, has published several articles in this area, and has been interviewed on these topics in radio shows and publications such as Trading in Today’s Markets and Kiplingers Personal Finance. Malcolm was also co-founder and principal of a hedge fund specializing in long/short equity, options and futures positions.
Malcolm has now rejoined Oliver at Velez Capital Management, LLC as Vice President of Trader Education. In this role, he coordinates the VCM educational events and manages a trader advancement program designed to develop proprietary traders.
James Droskoski Jr.
Chief Information Officer
James Droskoski Jr is Chief Information Officer of Velez Capital Management. James joined the firm in May 2008 with extensive experience in management of trading operations and leverage of technology for business improvement and growth. James identifies, implements, and manages technology solutions that provide Velez Capital Management's day traders and its operations staff with the most efficient trade execution, order management, reporting, support, and communication tools to help drive business profitability. James ensures that all trading infrastructure components are working efficiently and error-free. Additionally, James develops advanced tools and processes for data and information management, day trader performance reporting, and financial analysis of VCM's business.
With a growing experience in end-to-end infrastructure design and development and tools that supported networked, data-driven online businesses, James had a newfound excitement for what technology would provide in the now fast-growing day trading industry as he watched companies such as Cybertrader, Datek, Ameritrade, TD Waterhouse, and E*TRADE begin to thrive, and ECN's such as Island, Brut, MarketXT, and Archipelago change the face of how securities were bought and sold. James started direct access day trading in 2002, and with early success, helped his day trading group improve and grow as a pioneer in direct access rebate day trading by leveraging his experience in business and technology. While at Tradescape, contributed to the high trading volumes that led to the Etrade's $100 million acquisition of the company and its stock trading systems in 2002 as one to the direct access day traders specializing in rebate trading. With a move into management of his own private trading group understanding what was most important for traders , (Vision Trading), James fine-tuned the day trading skills of experienced day traders through the use of technologies and strategies that would grow and sustain their results. With extensive knowledge of complex infrastructure development that includes capital, technology providers, broker/dealers, clearing firms, traders, and trading groups, James Droskoski Jr. is now instrumental in helping Velez Capital Management increase their profitability while delivering superior products and services in the direct access day trading industry.
James graduated with honors from Hofstra University with a BBA in Finance and resides in Centerport, Long Island with his wife Christina Droskoski and two boys, Hunter and Lance, and their three-legged feline, Tripod. James and his family are blessed to be expecting the birth of their third child shortly.
Dr. Todd Hanson
Head of VCM Forex Trading Program
In an ongoing effort to provide superior training programs to raise your expectations, Dr. Todd Hanson has joined in collaboration with Oliver L. Velez and Velez Capital Management to spearhead a comprehensive Trade for LifeTM Forex program creating a new standard in Forex education.
Dr. Hanson holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley, a Masters of Science in Electronic Commerce from National University, and a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin. While at UC Berkeley, Dr. Hanson developed a process whereby nonlinear mathematical algorithms can be utilized in financial time series matrices. His findings, named the "Hanson Sieve", were published in the Journal of Mathematics. During the course of his Ph.D., he taught graduate courses in quantitative finance and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) system development.
Dr. Hanson has created numerous popular and successful trading systems that are employed by fund managers, brokerage houses and traders worldwide. By combining his education and experience, Dr. Hanson has been working on a groundbreaking project: developing a fully automated day trading system, whereby the program formulates all buy/sell/hold decisions, allocates appropriate amounts of capital to specific trades, and places orders electronically and autonomously. This program is now complete and operational through Velez Capital Management, LLC and available in a robust version specifically developed for VCM Forex traders. This proprietary software is the culmination of deep research into non-linear dynamics, A.I. systems, genetic algorithms, fractal theory and sacred geometry, as well as numerous cycle-timing models.