When you think “Wall Street”, you think New York. However, Brian Stutland has brought Wall Street to Chicago and helped to create a second home in America for investors. After becoming a contributor to CNBC in 2008, Stutland has appeared on shows such as “Fast Money”, “Options Action”, “Closing Bell”, and “Futures Now”, educating investors about the markets during his regular weekly commentary while broadcasting from any of the major trading floors in the U.S.
For Stutland, success in providing investors with actionable information does not come without an extensive success line himself. In 2009, Brian Stutland founded what is now known as Equity Armor Investments, LLC, an investment advisory firm. Stutland helps to service clients in the financial world and create licensed indices using Equity Armor’s proprietary trading methodologies. In 2014, Stutland acted as CIO for Equity Armor during its sub-advisor capacity to volatility based mutual funds but now he helps license their proprietary volatility strategies to third parties.
Stutland’s expertise and expansive knowledge of volatility came from his days as a market maker/trader on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Stutland first established himself as a true market participant as founder and head trader of the biggest VIX options market making firms by electronic volume on the CBOE from 2006 to 2014. Not only has Stutland been integral in providing Chicago with a voice in the financial markets, but his former broker/dealer Stutland Equities was an extremely successful market making business, trading multi-million dollar positions dating back to 2005.
Stutland hasn’t just relied on his volatility trading expertise to bring the public efficient ways of investing, but through his holding company Alpha II Zeta, LLC and Equity Armor Investments, Stutland has partnered with companies where his investment, trading expertise, and marketing knowledge of the industry helped transform a research based stock analytics company into a huge successful advisory firm.
As the market has evolved, so has Stutland’s engagement with the markets. As co-founder of Tremis, LLC, Tremis engages in the cryptocurrency space dealing with both physical crypto-coins and futures on Bitcoin.
Whether it has been creating liquidity for customers to access the Chicago Board Options Exchange’s products, or broadcasting live media from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading floors, Stutland has given Chicago and its city exposure to Wall Street.
Brian graduated Cum Laude in 1997 from the University of Michigan with a B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering and later received a M.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1999 before becoming a floor trader in 1999. He currently holds licenses for Series 65 and 56.
