Trading & Options · Profile from Trading and Options Research Companion
Linda Bradford Raschke
The California-born professional trader (born 1959, Pasadena) who started in 1981 as an equity-options market maker on the floor of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange and then the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, registered as a commodity trading advisor (CTA) with the NFA in 1992 and founded LBRGroup, Inc., was interviewed in Jack Schwager's The New Market Wizards (1992), co-wrote *Street Smarts: High Probability Short-Term Trading Strategies with Laurence A. Connors (M. Gordon Publishing Group, 1995) — the book that named the "Turtle Soup", "Holy Grail" and "80-20s" setups — ran futures funds as a CTA and, from 2002, a commodity pool operator (LBR Asset Management), retired from managing outside money in2015 and published a memoir, Trading Sardines (Daughters Press, 2018). She is this KB's case of short-term pattern trading by a professional who ran registered outside money — the evidence type (CTA disclosure documents) that most retail-system authors never produce, though her own year-by-year record was not retrievable for this batch.
At a glance
- Born
- 1959, Pasadena, California (Wikipedia); BA economics and music composition, Occidental College, 1980 (Wikipedia)
- Type
- Individual professional trader; options market maker (1981–), CTA (1992–2015) and CPO (2002–15), author and educator. This profile has five moves (rule 6 allows 5–7 for individuals): her documented decisions are career and business steps and one book
- Markets
- Equity options on the exchange floor (1980s); later US and global futures — stock-index, interest-rate, currency and commodity futures (secondary; verify mix)
- Registrations
- CTA with the NFA from 1992 (Wikipedia; one secondary source says 1991 — verify in NFA BASIC); CPO from 2002 (LBR Asset Management) (Wikipedia)
- Funds
- Watermark Fund (Cayman, launched 1998 with Laura Bondurant); principal trader for funds run by 6800 Capital LLC (dates not given); the Granat Fund (launch year not given) (all Wikipedia, secondary)
- Performance (reported)
- Granat Fund ranked 17th of ~4,500 hedge funds on five-year performance by BarclayHedge "in the late 2000s" (Wikipedia citing a 2017 Wyckoff Stock Market Institute article — secondary; BarclayHedge ranking not retrieved); "one losing year" across her managed-money career (turtletrader.com — unsourced). No year-by-year audited returns retrieved
- Writings
- Street Smarts (with Connors; M. Gordon, 1995 per the ISBN record; 1996 in some texts); Trading Sardines: Lessons in the Markets from a Lifelong Trader (Daughters Press, 2018; 2019 in some sources)
- Featured in
- Schwager, The New Market Wizards (1992); Herera, Women of the Street (Wiley, 1997); Lo and Hasanhodzic, The Heretics of Finance (Wiley, 2010); Bourquin, Traders at Work (Apress, 2013) (Wikipedia)
- Regulators
- No CFTC or NFA disciplinary action found (CFTC search and press search, Nov 2026; Wikipedia mentions none); NFA BASIC refused automated queries — verify in BASIC
- Recognition
- IFTA Lifetime Achievement Award (2024); former board member of the Market Technicians Association; two-term president of the American Association of Professional Technical Analysts (Wikipedia)
5 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
1981
Options Market Maker on the Floor
Founding of a career / liquidity-provision business
1992
CTA Registration and LBRGroup
Founding / registration — start of a managed-futures business
1995
Street Smarts with Connors
New strategy or product — a published book of short-term trading setups
2002
LBR Asset Management and the Granat Fund
Fund launch / CPO registration — from managed accounts to pooled vehicles
2015
Retirement from Managing Outside Money
Closing a fund or strategy / return of outside capital