Jim is Series 3 registered, and is a candidate for the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association (CAIA). Hamer Trading Inc. is a registered Commodity Trading Advisor and a registered Commodity Pool Operator.

Jim graduated from West Virginia University. He began his career working in his family's lumber business www.jimchamer.com and hardwood pellet business www.hamerpellet.com.

After spending several years in the lumber business, Jim decided to pursue a growing interest in investments and trading - particularly futures trading. In 1988 Jim became a member of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. As a 'floortrader' he predominately traded stock index and currency futures. After leaving the floor he began studying systematic approaches to trading. He was a long time subscriber to Futures Truth, a publication that tracked the real time performance of publicly offered trading systems and later Jim began testing his own trading ideas using Tradestation, a software program designed to back test trading ideas. Jim pursued a mentor and secured the training of one of the industry's legendary traders, Ed Seykota. Mr. Seykota's accomplishments have been documented in the book "Market Wizards". Several other top futures traders including; Michael Marcus, Bruce Kovner and David Druz were influenced by Seykota. In the book, Seykota is credited with converting Richard Donchian's trading methods (trend following) into computer code to back test the trading methods on historical price data. Seykota is credited with being one of the first to do such systematic testing.

Under Mr. Seykota's guidance, Jim learned the importance of risk management and techniques of systematic trend following. Since that training with Seykota, Jim has devoted his full time and attention to the research of market trends and to the management of capital in the commodity and futures trading arena. Jim began managing family (proprietary) accounts in June of 1997 and became registered as an associated person and principal of Hamer Trading, Inc. in August of 1998. Jim is an instrument rated pilot with over 2000 hours. He lives in Williamsburg, Virginia with his wife, Lesley.

Mr.  Thrift is responsible for the day to day trading operations of the firm. He met Jim in 2002 as part of a networking group of traders that use Tradestation, a software platform used to test trading ideas. Mr. Thrift is responsible for trade execution and contributes trading ideas and helps with research in testing those ideas. He is registered with the NFA as an associated person with Hamer Trading, Inc. and has over 15 years of experience in the futures markets.

Mr. Thrift graduated from Christopher Newport University in 1985 with a BSBA in Business Administration with concentrations in Real Estate and Finance. He worked as a Real Estate Appraiser for more than 13 years. He has been with Hamer Trading since September, 2002. Since then, Mr. Thrift has contributed to the company’s systematic model development as well as advanced money management strategies.