From Pit to Platform
The Story of Joe Busichio
After nearly fifty years in the sugar business, Joe Busichio has hung up his headset. We spoke via Zoom from his home in New Jersey, where he reflected on a career that began almost by accident and spanned one of the most transformative periods in the history of commodity trading.
Joe’s entry into the business was pure happenstance. In November 1976, fresh out of college with a BS in business and a few economics and statistics courses under his belt, he spotted a small newspaper ad: “Trading Assistant Wanted – No Experience Necessary.” With no job lined up, he figured it was worth a try.
The call connected him to the receptionist of Shearson Hayden Stone, a brokerage office in an upscale New Jersey shopping mall. The space was filled with stockbrokers—except for one corner where a handful of traders were buying and selling commodities for their own accounts, with commissions flowing back to Shearson and a few small clients on the side.
During the interview, when asked about salary expectations, Joe suggested $165 a week. The interviewer countered with $175—about $9,000 a year at the time. He started on the first business day of 1977, and within three months was surprised with a $1,000 bonus.
At first, Joe’s work was clerical—tracking trading positions, answering phones, and soaking up the atmosphere. Without his Series 3 license, he couldn’t take client orders. But once he earned it, he became the link between customers and the noisy open-outcry floor of the old New York Board of Trade (NYBOT), passing instructions down to runners and clerks.
Back then, trading sugar was anything but frenetic. The main play was the London/New York arbitrage, with the London contract priced in sterling. Daily volume in the Sugar No. 11 market hovered between 4,000 and 5,000 lots. Joe still remembers when, in 1979, open interest in No. 11 first crossed 100,000 contracts—a milestone that is dwarfed today, with typical open interest ranging from 800,000 to 1 million contracts and daily volumes between 75,000 and 150,000 lots, occasionally spiking to 250,000 or more. The record was set on February 12, 2020, with 542,699 contracts traded.
Some of those big days were tied to dramatic events. On October 18, 2013, the Copersucar export terminal in Santos, Brazil, caught fire, destroying six warehouses and a large quantity of raw sugar. In another case, on June 3, 1993, Cuba declared force majeure after its harvest plummeted to 4.2 million tons during the “Special Period” following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Joe recalls the market’s reaction that day with a grin. “The market must have opened a hundred points higher, and one floor broker called me saying, ‘I hear Cuba declared something like soup du jour?’ I said, ‘Do you mean force majeure?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, right, whatever.’” It was a reminder of how much colour and human character the market once had—something Joe believes is largely gone in today’s methodical, electronic world.
The shift from open outcry to electronic trading was seismic. When Joe started, the sugar market opened for only four hours a day. By the time ICE took over NYBOT and moved trading online in 2007, the hours had stretched far longer. At one point, sugar traded for thirteen hours a day; today it’s open nine and a half. Electronic trading broadened access, sped up execution, and lowered costs, but also removed much of the human element.
In the early years, everything was done by phone. Arbitraging London and New York meant literally holding two receivers at once, barking orders to both floors. Electronic platforms gave clients the ability to trade directly into their own accounts, but many preferred to pay a voice execution fee and let brokers handle the risk of mistakes. Even today, Joe says, around 70–75% of Macquarie Group’s sugar desk business is direct market access, but relationships still matter.
Over the past decade, algorithms and high-frequency traders have become increasingly dominant in daily trading volumes. Estimates suggest up to 70% of trades on any given day are computer-driven. HFT firms have spent millions of dollars on fibre optic cables and placed their servers closer to exchange buildings to gain nanosecond advantages, scalping for ticks and, in Joe’s view, distorting price discovery. “They call them liquidity providers,” he says, “but I think they’re liquidity takers.”
The role of the big trade houses has also diminished. In the past, producers and end-users routed all their hedging through companies like Dreyfus or Cargill, which provided the companies with unparalleled visibility into global flows. Today, many producers hedge directly, and speculative money often overwhelms the physical trade. Joe believes this has been the single biggest change in the market over his career.
He has also witnessed the decline of the floor as a training ground. Many of the best traders he’s known—whether in trade houses or funds—began on the floor, absorbing the rhythms and signals of the market. Without that apprenticeship, he feels younger traders miss out on a vital human dimension. “You can’t get the same sense of someone’s needs or mood from a chat message as you can from a voice,” he says.
For Joe, the best day of his career was the day he got his first job—an opportunity that set the course for the next fifty years. The worst was September 11, 2001. He had arrived at his Manhattan office just fifteen minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Centre. With communications cut, he had no way to reassure his wife and daughters that he was safe. “It was brutal not knowing if you’d see your family again,” he says. He has never visited the Ground Zero memorial; the loss still feels too personal.
Looking ahead, Joe doesn’t expect automation to replace people entirely in the sugar market, but he doubts it will ever return to the days when commercials dominated. Computers may trade with computers, but they still rely on commercial orders to feed liquidity. “We’re never turning back the clock,” he says. “The speculative money is here to stay.”
For all the challenges, he has no regrets. “I stumbled into this business by accident, but it’s taken me places I never imagined—Dubai, São Paulo, Hong Kong, Singapore—and introduced me to some of the most honest and hardworking people I’ve ever met. I’ve enjoyed 98% of it.”
When he retired, the messages poured in. Former colleagues, clients, and friends sent emails thanking him for his work—especially his daily market report, a fixture for two decades. “It was the first thing a lot of people read in the morning,” he says. “Writing it helped me organise my thoughts for the day. I hope someone picks up that mantle.”
As he steps away from the screens, Joe leaves behind not just a career, but an era. From the din of the trading pit to the silent speed of the algorithm, he has witnessed—and helped navigate—one of the most remarkable transformations in commodity markets.
To read the full interview, please visit my website.
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