Brian Murphy: Former Trader Becomes Baker Smith Island Cakes

"Monday's with Maureen"

Please join Maureen Ennor live Monday morning at 9:00 AM PST with Brian Murphy former commodities trader turned baker and owner of Smith Island Baking Company. on SM2KWS. For more than a decade, Brian Murphy spent six days a week trading commodities like electricity and natural gas—and even weather derivatives. Working his way up at Constellation Energy Group (CEG) in Baltimore, he was, by the age of 30, overseeing a group that brought in $4 billion in annual revenue. Then Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. As a counterparty with Lehman on energy transactions, Constellation saw its stock price sink 40 percent, and the company came under siege. Highly paid traders like Murphy were now expendable. He took a severance package in December 2008 and retreated to his family home in Easton, Md. Options soon poured in. "I could have gone to banks in London or New York or Chicago," says Murphy, now 32, and the father of four. "But I've lived in eastern Maryland since the second grade. My wife and I just didn't want to move."