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Guests & Co-Hosts

BRENDAN COURNANE

Brendan Cournane co-hosts the Stocks & Jocks show every Monday morning. He is also a public finance attorney licensed in both Illinois and Arizona. He has practiced law for more than 35 years acting primarily as counsel to issuers of municipal debt (bond counsel, underwriters’ counsel, bank counsel and special counsel). He has served in both the private and the public sectors, having been a partner in major U.S. law firms and as in-house counsel to such entities as the City of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools, as well as General Counsel to the Illinois Finance Authority, one of the nation’s largest issuers of conduit municipal bonds. Read more.

JOEL ELCONIN

Joel’s introduction to trading was in the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index futures pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Also, during his time at the CME, he was involved in Index Arbitrage as well as trading foreign currency futures and options. From 1994-1999 he was a proprietary trader for Olde Discount Corporation. Following his tenure at Olde Discount, he founded the Detroit office of Bright Trading, LLC. His responsibilities included trader recruitment, orientation and education as well as the day to day management of the office. He held this position office until 2003. Since 2003, Joel has been an independent trader researching and developing proprietary indicators and trading systems for the equities and futures markets. In 2007, Joel joined JC Trading Group as a Market Consultant and trading supervisor. He provides daily market commentary at www.premarketinfo.com. Joel obtained his Bachelor of Art in Political Science from the University of Michigan in 1985. Also, he is a graduate of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Continuing Education Program. He also holds his Series 7 and 63 licenses and is a licensed real estate broker.

KENNY POLCARI

Kenny Polcari is a Managing Principal at Tengler Wealth Management responsible for client engagement and market commentary. Leveraging his extensive trading and equity markets background, Kenny is also a member of the ButcherJoseph Asset Management, LLC Investment Committee. Kenny works with Tengler Wealth clients directly as well as appearing in the financial media and publishing a regular market commentary newsletter.

Kenny came to Wall Street as a summer intern on the New York Stock Exchange during the summers of ’80, ’81 & ’82 and upon graduation moved from Boston, Mass. to New York City where he began his career on the trading floor. He became a member of the New York Stock Exchange in August, 1985 and prior to joining the ButcherJoseph Asset Management Team to help launch Tengler Wealth Management was a Managing Director at O’Neil Securities, Inc., representing the interests of institutional asset managers that need to access global equity markets. Earlier in his career, Kenny served as managing director at Icap Corps, LLC, and prior to that was senior vice president, member New York Stock Exchange and division manager with Salomon Brothers directing their NYSE Division during the heady bull market of the 1990’s.

His 30 plus years of experience have taken him from the birth of the greatest bull market, to the crash of ’87, the roaring ’90’s, the .com implosion, decimalization, 9/11, Regulation NMS, the merger between the NYSE / ARCA, then NYSE/Euronext, automation, HFT, and fragmentation. He is an engaging public speaker and you can find him speaking at industry & investor conferences, as well as colleges, forums and major asset manager events. He is at ease speaking about NYSE history, rules & regulation, former & current market structure including internalization, HFT and fragmentation and how those changes have forever changed the face of the U.S. capital markets and what that means to the investor. He writes a daily “Morning Thoughts” missive that is an informative, engaging and entertaining look at global markets and provides insight into the day’s action. It has gained wide popularity and has become a signature of his “boots on the ground” analytical style. He is a member of STA and NOIP and is a guest lecturer for The American College. He holds the series 7, 24, 27, 55, 63 registrations.

DR. HAL SNARR

Dr. Snarr currently teaches business quantitative methods courses, money and banking, macroeconomic principles and MBA economics and data analysis. He has taught a variety of other courses at Idaho State University, Washington State University, Duke University and North Carolina A&T State University, including college algebra, microeconomic principles, macroeconomic principles, sports economics, intermediate microeconomic theory, elementary business statistics, advanced business statistics, labor economics, mathematical economics, econometrics, money and banking and calculus-based microeconomics.

Snarr enjoys being in the classroom, experimenting with innovative teaching techniques, producing instructional YouTube videos for his highly regarded channel, The Snarr Institute, conducting & publishing research articles, and writing articles for periodicals like the Mises Daily.

Snarr is an active scholar who follows the advice of Mark Twain and Jennifer Egan: “write what you know” or “what you are curious to find out.” He studies the effects of government policy on employment, migration, fertility and participation in public assistance programs. He is skilled at Stata, and uses it to construct panel datasets from the Current Population Survey and policy variables that he codes from various public sources. Snarr recently published his 14th peer-reviewed article, two macroeconomic books, an article in the Mises Daily, and is finishing two books on labor economics. He enjoys sharing his research findings, insights, and policy recommendations in community forums, and newspaper and radio interviews. Snarr is known as Shooting Snarr on Chicago’s Stocks and Jocks morning talk radio show.

MAYOR KEITH PEKAU

Keith Pekau was elected Mayor of Orland Park in April 2017 in his first run for elected office.

As Mayor, Keith has worked with the Orland Park Village Board to reduce the village’s operational budget by 13.9% and debt by approximately $40 million. This has allowed the village to lower property taxes while making additional investments in our roads, infrastructure, and parks.

When elected, Keith fulfilled his campaign promise and turned down the lucrative pension put in place by his predecessor. He then worked with the village board to eliminate pensions for all elected officials in Orland Park. As a strong believer in citizens government over career politicians, Keith worked to get term limits on the ballot and saw the referendum pass with nearly 89% of the vote in November 2020.

During his tenure, Keith proactively worked to reduce crime in Orland Park, leading to the lowest village crime rate in over a quarter-century. He works closely with regional municipal and business partners, co-founded the Chicago Southland Interstate Alliance, an I-80 corridor development group, and is on the board of the I-80 Coalition. When three major retail companies went out of business in February 2018, Keith led the efforts to find sustainable replacements to keep tax revenue flowing into the village.

Keith is a decorated combat veteran and Air Force Instructor Weapons System Officer. He has over 1,500 hours of flight time, including 45 combat sorties and 150 combat hours over southern Iraq.

After leaving the Air Force, Keith was a management consultant for two international consulting firms. In 2003, Keith started GroundsKeeper Landscape Care, a full-service landscaping and tree service company, which he sold in 2019. In 2009, Keith co-founded Fahrenheit Consulting which specializes in helping businesses develop market growth strategies.