Lawrence G. McMillan is the President of McMillan Asset Management and McMillan Analysis Corporation, which he founded in 1991. He is perhaps most well-known as the author of Options As a Strategic Investment, the best-selling work on stock and index options strategies. The book – initially published in 1980 – is currently in its fifth edition and is a staple on the desks of many professional option traders.
His career has taken two simultaneous paths – one as a professional trader and money manager, and the other as an educator and proponent of using option strategies.
In these capacities, he currently authors and publishes ""The Option Strategist"", a derivative products newsletter covering options and futures, now in its 24th year of publication. His firm also edits and publishes three daily newsletters, as well as option letters for Dow Jones. He has spoken on option strategies at many seminars and colloquia, and also occasionally writes for and is quoted in financial publications regarding option trading.
Mr. McMillan is the recipient of the prestigious Sullivan Award for 2011, awarded by the Options Industry Council in recognition of his contributions to the Options Industry.
Although he has personally been trading listed options since their inception in 1973, his professional trading career began as a proprietary trader at Thomson McKinnon Securities, where he was a Senior Vice President in charge of the Equity Arbitrage Department from 1981 to 1989. In that capacity, he traded the firm's own money – primarily in advanced option strategies and risk arbitrage. Prior to that, he had been the firm’s retail option strategist, from 1976 to 1980.
Today, as a registered investment advisor and CTA, he manages option trading accounts through his Volatility Capture program.
Mr. McMillan has a B.S. in Mathematics from Purdue University, and a M.S. in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Colorado. He initially worked for Bell Telephone Laboratories in Whippany, NJ, from 1972 to 1976, as a computer programmer at the highest technical level of that firm.