One of only a handful of electronic trading firms in the U.S. to have roots in the futures pits, M&N adapted quickly to the era of on-screen trading. In 1998, after several years spent trading five-year treasury notes at the Chicago Board of Trade, seasoned traders Jim Masterson and Dave Northey rewarded the hard work and dedication of a small group of their trading clerks. They opened up trading accounts for each of them, taught them the strategies they'd need to successfully trade the U.S. Treasury yield curve, and then set them loose in the night bond pit. This was the humble beginning of M&N Trading, LLC.

For the first few years, there was no viable electronic trade in Chicago. But, by the end of the 1990s, the volume shift from floor to screen was underway and M&N immediately began trading both platforms, becoming one of the pioneers of the off-floor proprietary trading movement in Chicago.

In 2001, realizing one of the key benefits of electronic trading was geographic autonomy from the trading floor pits, Masterson and Northey partnered with an old colleague, Anthony Lazzara, a successful futures trader and broker, and opened up a second M&N office in Newport Beach, California.

Four years later, realizing that the performance of their trading network was critical to their success, Masterson and Northey converted an old West Loop manufacturing building in Chicago into a state-of-the-art trading facility for M&N. They quickly built their own trading network and continue to optimize it to ensure that there is no faster way to get orders to the exchange's matching engines.

Today, M&N employs just over 40 talented traders in Chicago and Newport Beach and trades well over 30,000,000 futures contracts each year.