Raised on a farm near the tiny southeastern Nebraska town of Virginia, Jobman graduated from Wartburg College in Iowa in 1963. He began his journalistic career as a sportswriter for the Waterloo (Iowa) Courier for several years before going into the Army. He served with the 82^nd Airborne Division and as an infantry platoon leader with the Manchus in the 25^th Infantry Division, including nine months in Vietnam in 1967-68, earning the Silver Star and Bronze Star.

After military service, Jobman returned to the Courier, where he became farm editor in early 1969. He was introduced to futures markets when he wrote a column about how speculators were ruining farm prices and was “corrected” by Merrill Oster. That led to writing assignments for Oster and then a full-time position in 1972, where Jobman participated in the founding of Professional Farmers of America and associated newsletters.

When Oster purchased Commodities Magazine in 1976, Jobman was named editor and later became editor-in-chief of Futures Magazine when the name was changed in 1983 during one of the biggest growth periods for new markets and new trading instruments in futures history. He was an editor at Futures until 1993, when he left to become an independent writer/consultant.

Since 1993, he has written, collaborated, edited or otherwise participated in the publication of about a dozen books on trading, including The Handbook on Technical Analysis. He has also written or edited articles for several publications and brokerage firms as well as trading courses and educational materials for Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade. He also served as editorial director of CME Magazine.

Jobman and his wife, Lynda, live in Wisconsin, and spend a lot of time visiting with a daughter and three grandchildren also in Wisconsin, and a son and granddaughter in Florida.