Executive Team
Richard Hefter, President
Richard founded AdviceTrade in July 2001. A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Richard began his business publishing career at Cahners Publishing Company, where he was twice awarded the Jesse H. Neal Editorial Achievement Award, the Pulitzer of the trade press. As a communications associate at Northwestern University in the mid-1990's, he was involved in the early migration from print to online publishing in overseeing the Office of Development's first Website. Just prior to AdviceTrade, Richard was editor-in-chief of the financial news site, AmericaInvest.com. Online Investor Magazine named him one of the Top 25 financial columnists on the Web in its October 2000 issue, and his business articles appeared in Red Herring, Morningstar, MarketWatch, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Magazine and Newsday. Since its launch in July 2001, AdviceTrade has grown into a family of online investing publications used daily by thousands of traders in more than 40 countries around the world.
Jeff Kay, Senior Vice President, Technology & Partner
Jeff joined AdviceTrade in November 2001, shortly after its founding. As Senior Vice President, Technology, he has overseen the company's growth from a single Website into a family of financial sites, which Jeff and his team have designed, developed and managed. AdviceTrade's proprietary "Trading Rooms" are the product of Jeff's engineering and ingenuity. Prior to AdviceTrade, Jeff served as Director of Technology at Digital Bridge, where he developed a number of websites, many in the financial space, and corporate intranets. A trained musician and performing saxophonist, Jeff studied music at Northern Arizona University prior to embarking on computer programming. After college, Jeff worked at Canyon WebWorks, where he developed a number of notable websites, including sites for the National Park Service (Grand Canyon), Teva Sandals, and the medical division of Gore-Tex Fabrics. A developer of applications for Linux, Jeff was featured in the March 2001 Linux Journal.
Thomas Sweeney, Senior Vice President Client Relations
A proud Buffalo, NY native who received his Bachelors & Masters in Economics from SUNY Buffalo, Tom joined AdviceTrade in 2011 and has helped manage, in his customer relations role, a nearly 8-fold growth in members. Tom has also been critical in helping design the user experience in AdviceTrade's growing number of Trading Rooms, synthesizing customer input in combination with his own insights as a trader and his 10 years of experience working at financial Websites. Hands down, he says, the best part of his job is working directly with customers and getting to see the markets and Websites through their eyes. When not helping members or working on improving the site, you will find Tom spending time with his wife, walking his dog, visiting family & friends, volunteering, or "hacking away" on a golf course.
Analyst Co-Publishers
Avi Gilburt, Co-Publisher, ElliottWaveTrader
Avi Gilburt co-founded ElliottWaveTrader.net with AdviceTrade in 2011. A lawyer and accountant by training, Avi is also managing member of Gilburt Financial Services, LLC, which provides financial markets analysis and consulting. Avi emphasizes a comprehensive reading of charts and wave counts that is free of personal bias or predisposition. He is particularly known for identifying a standardized method for determining whether movement within the market is going to be a 5-wave move as opposed to a 3-wave move. This method, known as "Fibonacci Pinball," has been called by some as "the single most useful addition the Elliott Wave lexicon" and "one of the most profound discoveries in EW analysis."
Avi is a popular speaker at financial forums and conferences in the U.S. and internationally, including The Traders Expo and Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) Conference, and widely syndicated on sites including MarketWatch, TheStreet, Seeking Alpha, Nasdaq.com, Forbes and more. He was the #1-read metals analyst for 3 years on Seeking Alpha, and is consistently among the top-followed contributors to MarketWatch's Trading Deck. One of the main reasons Avi has been among the most widely followed metals analyst in the world has been due to his accuracy. In 2011, those that heeded his warning of a top to the metals market exited the market within $6 of the all-time high struck in gold. And in October 2015, he suggested those that followed his analysis begin to move back into metals and mining stocks again. In the equity markets, while most were concerned about a market crash at the end of January of 2016, Avi was suggesting that a global melt-up was about to take hold in US equity markets and emerging markets. And, as we know, the US equity markets and emerging markets rallied strongly from February until September.
Mike Paulenoff, Co-Publisher, MPTrader
Mike co-founded MPTrader with AdviceTrade in 2003. He has been involved in the world financial markets for three decades since his graduation from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1979. Early in his career he analyzed the fundamental and technical aspects of the financial and commodity futures markets for Smith Barney, Harris Upham, and for Drexel, Burnham, Lambert. From 1988 to 1993 he was President of MJ Capital Inc., a market analysis and trading firm, which advised clients involved in the financial futures and commodity markets. In 1992-93, he co-authored The Business-One Irwin Guide to the Futures Markets (with Stanley Kroll). Republic National Bank recruited Mike in January 1994, for the position of strategic trader, and market analyst on the bank's trading floor, which included analysis and trading of instruments in foreign exchange, emerging markets, stock indices, and precious metals. In February 1999, Michael founded MJP Market Strategies, Inc., a financial market advisory firm. In addition, from August 2000 through August 2001, he was the chief on-air market consultant and strategist for JAGfn, a live, daily 8-hour financial market webcast and cable TV show produced by Jagnotes, Inc. Mike's articles and commentaries are widely distributed on sites such as MarketWatch, Real Money, and Nasdaq.