CHICAGO — With a shaved head and fixed gaze, Todd Hanson still looks like a Marine. He drills military veterans in how to trade foreign currencies, ambushing the market at the most profitable moments.

"Right now, we're just waiting and watching," Hanson recently told a class.

His mission at WexTrade Financial is to build commodity traders out of ex-soldiers, underwriting their training with federal funds. Settling even a small percentage of veterans into the futures markets is a highly unusual idea.

Among the civilian jobs listed by the Veterans Affairs Department are nurse, truck driver, beautician and cemetery caretaker, humble salaries compared with the millions of dollars a successful trader can command.

Still, the economic home front can be hostile to enlistees who once made life or death decisions and were responsible for protecting others.

"You're used to being God for 20 people," said Hanson, a winner of the Bronze Star. "You come back here, and the job market is flooded. You find yourself flipping Big Macs, wondering where your prestige went."

Translating combat experience into market savvy has been an aggravating experiment for WexTrade. The Securities and Exchange Commission this month charged its initial backer, WexTrust Capital, in a $255 million Ponzi scheme.

WexTrade severed connections with the private-equity firm, as Hanson and his partner, Jerry Considine, downgraded WexTrust's status from being their parent company to that of a former potential investor. The SEC investigation does not involve WexTrade, they said, adding that they had no knowledge of WexTrust's alleged activities.

WexTrade also is waiting to receive accreditation as a certificate program under the GI Bill, which would enable veterans to be fully reimbursed for enrolling in its $5,000-a-month courses. Disabled veterans already qualify for the reimbursements. Of the 309,540 veterans who paid for their education through the GI Bill last year, just 14,513 attended a vocational program similar to what WexTrade offers.

The classes range from a month to three months and are also available to those without military records.

The company has graduated students from three courses, leaving the biggest challenge ahead as those traders test themselves in the markets. A solid trader can land in the penthouse; a failed one in bankruptcy court.

Some graduates will land at WexTrade, dealing for the house account under the guidance of Considine, a commodity adviser with 27 years in the business. They will follow the models taught by Hanson, who received a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley and designed trading software after leaving the Marine Corps.

One current student is Paul Lee, an honorably discharged Marine staff sergeant who served in Iraq and is now a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Lee, 25, grew up in Naperville, Ill. Lukewarm high school grades produced nothing but rejection letters when he applied to college. He joined the Marines, completing two tours in the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Lee handled logistics in the war: the transportation of troops, fuel and materiel through seaports and across desert expanses. Many lessons from his service parallel what he has learned in trading.

"You fall back on your training, looking for the signals, whether you should go long or short," Lee said. "You look for your entry and exit points. You stick to your guns."

This summer, Lee had an internship at Lehman Brothers in Manhattan. While he says he enjoyed his time there, like when a trader bought the entire desk 1,000 White Castle hamburgers for lunch, Lee sees himself eventually running a proprietary trading firm or hedge fund. He will graduate in December from UIC, where he is chairman of the investment club.

The knowledge of how to profit from a hundredth of a cent is incredibly valuable, he explained, paraphrasing a quote from Archimedes, the ancient Greek mathematician and weapons engineer.

"With the right amount of leverage, I can move the world," Lee said.