Bye Bye Bellies

[thetradingdoctor]

Now if everyone walking around with Diabesity (the new syndrome of Diabetes plus Obesity that is becoming epidemic in the world) could lose his belly this easily, it would be a much healthier world!

With the merger of the CBOT and the CME, a physical consolidation of the two exchanges' trading floors will take place with the Merc floor being shuttered.
As a result some current open outcry pits will move exclusively to the screen, a move that will likely mean the death of the product in certain cases

By DOW JONES
CHICAGO, Aug. 28� The CME Group, created recently when Chicago’s big futures exchanges merged, said Tuesday that it was closing trading pits for pork bellies and other products as traders increase their focus on electronic platforms.
As part of their recent merger, the CME and the CBOT plan to consolidate their trading floors and electronic-trading platforms and to shift more trading business to computer screens.
Starting in March, a handful of products that are floor-traded in limited amounts will move exclusively to CME’s Globex electronic platform. Those include agricultural products like frozen pork bellies futures and options, and cash dairy products.
Some financial products will also move to exclusive screen trading, including one-month Libor futures and Euroyen futures, and options on futures. Commodities leaving the pits include 100-ounce gold options, 5,000-ounce silver options and ethanol futures.
CME also said trading of all foreign exchange futures products would be consolidated into a single trading pit, while the trading of some foreign exchange products would move to Globex.
None of the moves affect the biggest products at CME, which are financial futures and options tied to United States interest rate expectations. Those are traded both electronically and on trading floors.
While some of the pits at issue have become sleepy, closing them represents a symbolic shift for the exchange and the culture of floor trading in Chicago. Pork bellies, for example, have been traded on the floor for 46 years.

Thanks!

Doctor Janice

[Nick1984]

Here in Australia we don't have an open outcry system anymore at all. I think it got phased out completely around 10 years ago.

Whenever I saw those pit traders in a royal rumble I was always fascinated by how they actually managed to get anything done, it looks so chaotic with all those crazy hand signals and people pushing and shoving!

I guess the current trend is that we rely more and more on technology these days to get things done for us that why we as a planet are adding to the gravitational pull of the Earth with our ever expanding porcine bellies!

[thetradingdoctor]

PBS did a show called "Open Outcry." I think it was filmed around 2000, but I am not sure. Soon the colored jackets, hand movements and pit noise are likely to give way to the flickering electronic ticks, as the pits die a slow death. The end of an era. I have never liked endings much, but I am acutely aware that all things do end eventually.

Thanks!

Doctor Janice

http://www.pbs.org/itvs/openoutcry/trading1.html