"The broker-client relationship can be as intense as any psychiatrist-patient relationship," he said. "So, you really have to acquaint yourself with human nature in its various guises to understand how people relate to their money, and why they get into the market. Often it's not to make money, on a much deeper level."

People who get into trading may be guys with fading athletic prowess looking for a second youth. Or thrill seekers, jumping from ever-higher cliffs into the swirling pools of futures options. "And the demographics of most traders fall right on the midlife crisis line, and that's not the best time to be making decisions," Hackett said.

"Some people just like to keep rolling the dice regardless of what they do. They go on and on about how they want to make money, but the decisions speak for themselves."

Subconscious motivations affect producers as well, Hackett said. Real goods are what they are, but the people that grow, harvest, mine, refine, and ship them are all influenced by a unique set of factors. The structure of the companies they work for can even encourage the inclination to act on emotion, ego or other motivators that have little to do with business.

"When you have multiple plutocracies whose agendas are predicted by the dead hands of their past, but the people in there have to maintain their importance in the world, you have all kinds of strange outcomes," he said.

As a broker, Chuck Hackett finds himself wading through the emotions, the numbers curves, the weather forecast and a host of other things to try to provide the best information. In the middle of all of it, he's subtly trying to get his clients to make the best financial moves, not ones that are necessarily going to give them a thrill.

Into The Age of The Internet

He finds himself a bit of a dinosaur in the age of the Internet, when the commodities brokerage business has itself become commoditized, he said. But he thinks that the informed broker still has an important role in the world of instant, mouse-click trades.

"There was already a 90% casualty rate among new traders before online trading," he said. "I think the mortality rate is as high as ever. Having a lot of information doesn't mean that you have any judgment about what to do with it."

And not to get the wrong idea, Hackett seems pretty humble about his work. Taking in the "multifaceted diamond" of supply-side issues, market demand, emotional price swings, unpredictable business moves and unconscious motivators, he knows that he, too, is human, and that he can only go with his best feeling at any particular time.

"Every day you miss the best trade of your life, but there are some that are really embarrassing," he said. "You're always forced to act on imperfect information."