Ron Lawson

The Wise Have LOGIC on Their Side


Ron Lawson

A 5th generation Northern Californian, Ron has been involved in agriculture his entire life. Opting not to return to work on his Family’s dairy farm and cattle ranch, upon graduation from the University of California Davis with a B.S. in Livestock Production Management, Ron took a Field Representative position with McCormick Schilling. His duties included overseeing the contracting, planting, growing and harvesting of approximately 75,000 acres of row crops from the Mexican border north into Oregon. Ron left McCormick to manage the Christopher Ranch in Gilroy, California, a diversified vegetable and produce company with notoriety as being the world’s largest Garlic farm. While in Gilroy, Ron was one of the founding fathers of the internationally renowned Gilroy Garlic Festival.

In 1982, Ron left the Garlic fields for Wall Street, starting in the San Jose office of Merrill Lynch as a Commodities and Futures Specialist. Early successes in this position prompted his transfer to the firm’s Los Angeles office, joining the Cotton trading desk in 1986. The branch’s business grew as Ron established and then managed Merrill Lynch Futures’ Pacific Coast Futures Center. A subsequent promotion to Resident Manager of the Western Region resulted in his overseeing the firm’s 126 Commodity Brokers and Futures trading in the 17 western states, which in turn preceded Ron’s move back home to Northern California in the summer of 1996.

Upon Merrill’s exit of the brokered commodity business in early 2000, Ron accepted a position as the Head of the Cotton Trading Desk of Prudential Financial. By the spring of 2004, upon Prudential’s merger with Wachovia, a non-commodity trading Bank, the trading desk’s futures and derivatives business was larger than Wachovia professed it could handle. This prompted the establishment of both LOGIC Advisors and Steadfast Futures & Options.