However, wealthy bystander will continue to make the big buck. They may even be able to take over all those repossessed homes.
Good riddance! The locals made the markets opaque. You weren't sure that you were always getting the best price, or even where the bid and ask even were in fast moving markets. None of that was visible. On a screen I can see what the bid and ask are before I decide to trade. We want markets that are at least somewhat transparent to the end users, and the trading pits did not provide that. Of course the screen, with all of the flash trading that's happening, is just as rigged, but I feel that computerization is a big win for retail traders.
2
Yes, I am a Dinosaur, I was probably never known as a T-Rex,
Maybe a brontosaurus :), I like my father was a floor trader. I grew up at the CME I became enormously successful and then fell off the mountain a couple of times. Society will never realize what was lost here. This is not a local factory. This was a hallowed hall where regular people could make huge livings and never miss a little league game for your kids. I've traded hundreds of billions of dollars with nothing more than a pen and my word. Ask any trader and they will tell u how annoying buying a car it home, the paperwork is insane. Not at the exchanges. It was simple, dishonesty was not tolerated, people wouldn't work with u if u were dishonest. Yes like every industry we have a few bad apples. Computers have turned those apples into giant watermelons. The playing field has never been truly level, but the irony of the computer, Which was suppose to be the ultimate in fairness had allowed the biggest cheating in the history of our industry. Only people that want to know, know but only the cheaters will tell you how fair it is. Anyone interested just read a few articles on high frequency trading, at your height of confusion you'll realize it's a scam.
Maybe a brontosaurus :), I like my father was a floor trader. I grew up at the CME I became enormously successful and then fell off the mountain a couple of times. Society will never realize what was lost here. This is not a local factory. This was a hallowed hall where regular people could make huge livings and never miss a little league game for your kids. I've traded hundreds of billions of dollars with nothing more than a pen and my word. Ask any trader and they will tell u how annoying buying a car it home, the paperwork is insane. Not at the exchanges. It was simple, dishonesty was not tolerated, people wouldn't work with u if u were dishonest. Yes like every industry we have a few bad apples. Computers have turned those apples into giant watermelons. The playing field has never been truly level, but the irony of the computer, Which was suppose to be the ultimate in fairness had allowed the biggest cheating in the history of our industry. Only people that want to know, know but only the cheaters will tell you how fair it is. Anyone interested just read a few articles on high frequency trading, at your height of confusion you'll realize it's a scam.
11
I was with a futures clearing merchant (FCM) at the CBOT and CME for five years during the (last?) heady period of the 1980's. The author is absolutely correct that the trading pits offered young people (mostly men) from blue-collar backgrounds a leg-up into gaining wealth they'd unlikely ever obtain otherwise. A kid right out of high school might get a summer job clerking for a trader and, if they proved reliable, stay with him longer. The next step for some clerks would be to get the trader to "pledge" the necessary cash and securities to lease a basic trading seat. Some kids would get ahead of themselves and "blow-out" within months. Most would never make a consistent living and eventually fade off the floors into other jobs or life paths. But some would have the discipline and stamina to do very well for themselves.
Was open-outcry good for customers? Probably not. But I sure feel privileged to have been a part of it for a few years. What a world it was, and will never be again.
Was open-outcry good for customers? Probably not. But I sure feel privileged to have been a part of it for a few years. What a world it was, and will never be again.
6
I worked at GLOBEX, the CME's electronic system in the nineties. The floor traders feared electronic trading, so trading started after the floor closed (the CME was also trying to get Asian banks' business, hence the system's ambitious sounding moniker). GLOBEX back then did a miniscule percent of the floor's volume (there were nights when a mere 200 contracts were exchanged; we would watch tv and rent movies to pass the time...this was pre-internet). The floor traders were right, but I am not surprised. Actually took longer to happen than I expected.
1
Traders embraced risk,it was catnip to them. In the 70s, I worked across the street from the CBOT and would often have lunch in a lobby bar called, Sign of the Trader. One day, I walked in and it was so crowded, I couldn't even get to the bar for a drink. I asked the hostess what was going on, and she replied, "They closed the trading floor upstairs because of a bomb threat, so everyone came down here for a drink."
7
My first job out of college was as a commodities research analyst on Wall Street covering the grains. Loved the clatter of the news machines spewing out data on imports, exports, planting intentions, weather forecasts, waiting for those crucial USDA "situation reports" on wheat, corn and soybeans. Bells would clang when something big was being reported and everyone would run to the machine to read the news - the more bells, the more important the news. And when we didn't know what was causing a sudden move in the market, we would call our guy on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade to find out what had triggered the activity and he always knew. Sorry to see the floor trade closing down. Sort of like the death of an old friend.
10
I worked for a group a traders from the CBOT and CME for a lot of years back in the 1970s. What an exciting time to be in the business, when everyone was young, smart, cool and interesting, and every single day fortunes were made and lost. I'm not at all surprised to hear it's all going the way of the dodo. But what happens when the electricity goes off?
3
Amazing to read the commenters outside of Chicago. I daresay few of these commenters have taken a microeconomics or finance course.
"These people are gamblers/what is wrong with finance!" No, they are people who compete to take risk from businesses which do not want that risk. They are not gambling; they only take risk if they think they can make money. (cf. any investments text) Best of all: they didn't require a bailout. In fact, their market inspired much of the Dodd-Frank reform bill.
"HFT firms like Goldman are now in charge!" No. Most HFT firms are pit traders who learned to program computers and out-competed big banks (including Goldman) to make trading cheaper than it has ever been. They busted open the Old Boys club and anyone saving for retirement has benefitted.
"These guys are dishonest!" or "I lost money trading against them; they are bad!" They are professional speculators: they compete for who will take calculated risks for the cheapest in hopes of making a profit. If they are right, they make money; if not, they can lose everything. Furthermore, their market is highly monitored and time-stamped to the millisecond. Those records are subpoenaed if dishonesty is suspected. As for losing money trading against them... an amateur speculator lost out to a professional speculator. Why is that dishonest in any way? That's like saying Joe Blow should be able to out-dunk Michael Jordan!
"These people are gamblers/what is wrong with finance!" No, they are people who compete to take risk from businesses which do not want that risk. They are not gambling; they only take risk if they think they can make money. (cf. any investments text) Best of all: they didn't require a bailout. In fact, their market inspired much of the Dodd-Frank reform bill.
"HFT firms like Goldman are now in charge!" No. Most HFT firms are pit traders who learned to program computers and out-competed big banks (including Goldman) to make trading cheaper than it has ever been. They busted open the Old Boys club and anyone saving for retirement has benefitted.
"These guys are dishonest!" or "I lost money trading against them; they are bad!" They are professional speculators: they compete for who will take calculated risks for the cheapest in hopes of making a profit. If they are right, they make money; if not, they can lose everything. Furthermore, their market is highly monitored and time-stamped to the millisecond. Those records are subpoenaed if dishonesty is suspected. As for losing money trading against them... an amateur speculator lost out to a professional speculator. Why is that dishonest in any way? That's like saying Joe Blow should be able to out-dunk Michael Jordan!
5
Architect Louis Sullivan's 1893-94 Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, salvaged when the building was demolished, was reconstructed at the Art Institute of Chicago in the late 1970s.
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/156538
Will the current temple to commerce be so honored when it falls into complete disuse?
http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/156538
Will the current temple to commerce be so honored when it falls into complete disuse?
Nah - it's too big and too tall. Like the guys would say, Where ya gonna put it?
For all its warts, and there were many, it did provide a career stepping stone for thousands of men and a few women. I admit to acquiring a few traits (habits?) and skills on the floor of the Merc 25 years ago which I still use today. No question it was an aggressive and colorful environment with a persona that copied more than created the bruising stereotype of Chicago business and politics. As influential as this experience has been on my adult business life, I have to admit the day I was fired from my trading firm and (I'll paraphrase here since this is a family news outlet) told to hit the road was one of the more liberating moments in my life. I never looked back and feel no nostalgia. I'm sure there are many like me out there.
Despite criticisms of 'open outcry' market making, it did provide a somewhat orderly and liquid pricing mechanism that greatly reduced volatility, and still does albeit electronically.
Despite criticisms of 'open outcry' market making, it did provide a somewhat orderly and liquid pricing mechanism that greatly reduced volatility, and still does albeit electronically.
I worked as a pit clerk at the CME in the mid-1970s so I have many memories of the trading floor. Dealing with the pace of the trading required a lot of of precision and focus in the midst of disorder--you had to write down the bids and offers on cards as they occurred, and woe to the poor clerk who didn't submit the card with the particular bid or offer quickly enough to get posted. Dealing with the traders' egos and personalities required a different kind of focus. Some could be friendly and talkative; others were the biggest jerks you'd ever want to meet. Above all, they were fiercely competitive. I still remember one trader in the lumber pit who was unmercifully bullied by another. I never could understand how he handled the abuse. Still, I won't forget the noise, the action and the incredible energy that was unleashed after the trading bell was rung each morning. Thousands of pit clerks and runners staffed that trading floor in the decades it has been open; many, like myself, obtained their first "real" jobs at the Merc. It was an opportunity to learn and to grow and to understand human dynamics. There was more than one time where a trader never returned to the pit after being on the wrong side of a trade and losing a fortune. The end of the trading pit is truly an end of an era.
6
Nicely written piece that tells the story, the story behind the story and ties them together with societal impact past and future. Kudos to Mr. Alden.
4
I used to raise a glass with the CBOE guys at the Berghoff Men's Bar in Chicago. They were a crazy, stressed out bunch, but a hell of a lot of fun.
4
As a young CPA with a large firm in 1976 I spent several months in Chicago auditing Paine Webber's commodities business in the CBOT building. They thought I was a little daft because I actually wanted to learn - and did - how to do a point balance, a calculation that proved the recording of a firm's daily activity. Not only the trading pit jobs but also the "back office" work were good jobs. No one was under the illusion that you needed a "rounded education" past high school. The flip side was that hiring was mostly done on recommendation that a kid had smarts so there was a lot of clan influence. The control was that the new hires essentially served apprenticeships. If you recommended your not so sensible nephew and he screwed up, people were likely to be adverse to hiring your other nephew or your friend's son who had smarts and common sense.
Computers have been doing the point balances and their equivalent for a long time. The order matching, record keeping and other routine work of the pit are things that computers are good at; actually they are much better at it than virtually any human. It is no wonder that work has been automated. As the article alluded, there are still humans supervising the computers.
I wish the employees whose jobs are going away good luck in finding new positions; analytical skills and a sharp eye for errors should be in demand somewhere.
Computers have been doing the point balances and their equivalent for a long time. The order matching, record keeping and other routine work of the pit are things that computers are good at; actually they are much better at it than virtually any human. It is no wonder that work has been automated. As the article alluded, there are still humans supervising the computers.
I wish the employees whose jobs are going away good luck in finding new positions; analytical skills and a sharp eye for errors should be in demand somewhere.
11
My uncle lived in NYC and worked in the NY mercantile exchange pits for nearly two decades. I had the opportunity to visit the trading floor with him on a few occasions over the last decade. I remember the noise, the bustle, the heat, the swearing, the lingering stench of cigarette smoke..
Dress code: a shirt and tie, OR anything else under a trader jacket. I don't remember any ties.
It was volatile. There were days he and his colleagues would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Paper profits, to be sure, but I saw the very real sting.) Others, they made it back. It was the Wild West.
I remember a general feeling of hopelessness in the air during my last visit to the floor. Electronic trading systems had been around for a few years then, but were finally displacing their human counterparts. Empty pits, slow movements, sullen moods
There's a new sheriff in town.
Dress code: a shirt and tie, OR anything else under a trader jacket. I don't remember any ties.
It was volatile. There were days he and his colleagues would lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Paper profits, to be sure, but I saw the very real sting.) Others, they made it back. It was the Wild West.
I remember a general feeling of hopelessness in the air during my last visit to the floor. Electronic trading systems had been around for a few years then, but were finally displacing their human counterparts. Empty pits, slow movements, sullen moods
There's a new sheriff in town.
6
Does this mean the end of Rick Santelli's amen corner, birthplace of the so-called tea party?
7
That would be a nice unintended consequence!
3
With High Frequency Trading now the norm, where a many millisecond front-run on the trade can generate huge profits for the HFT operators and their firms, why bother with this penny-ante, bushwah, old fashioned method of buying and selling futures, with flashing cards, traders raising hands like little schoolboys at play, or shouting out your bid/sell quote? Just ask Goldman Sachs, or HSBC, or J.P. Morgan or any of the big houses that have their HFT computer desks virtually next door to the trading floors and firms, why they love HFT'ing so much. GS has had hardly a down day in years of wheeling and dealing in the HFT markets…front running and profiteering off a trade is now so commonplace in this manipulated and corrupt market, that the chances of getting it under control are slim to none - and slim has just closed up shop.
“Now the traders are different,” said Mr. Calascibetta, 61, who has an accent from his native Turin, Italy. “The traders who trade every day on the computer, they don’t know what a tip is.”
Too true, Mr. Calascibetta. The only tip they know is the one they can profit on to the detriment of everyone else.
“Now the traders are different,” said Mr. Calascibetta, 61, who has an accent from his native Turin, Italy. “The traders who trade every day on the computer, they don’t know what a tip is.”
Too true, Mr. Calascibetta. The only tip they know is the one they can profit on to the detriment of everyone else.
6
The old fashioned tippees also profited to the detriment of everyone else. That is the nature of any two-sided trade market.
Most people assume the locals who worked in the pits have been replaced by computers, but in fact the people on the trading floors in Chicago (and New York and London) have to a large extent been replaced by people in places as far-flung as India, Poland, China, and Kenya. New proprietary trading companies, started by former exchange locals, recruit and train young college-educated traders who sit in front of screens and enter their orders on exchanges around the world by manually tapping on keyboards. As reported recently in the FT, the volume is represents as much as one-third of the total volume in certain futures contracts and hundreds of millions of contract overall. The companies pay salaries that reflect the lower cost of living in these locations, and split trading profits with those individuals who are successful. The exchanges offer the companies various rebates as well as substantial volume discounts on exchange fees. These rebates and discounts are substantial enough in aggregate to allow the companies to be very profitable regardless of the collective performance of their traders. In other words, given their trading volume, the rebates and discounts are large enough to pay all the traders' salaries and overheads and still make substantial profits even if all their traders' activity nets to zero. It's all about the volume--the more they do, the more they make. (And of course, this is perfectly aligned with the interest of the exchanges in more "liquidity".)
7
Before 911 we were allowed to go view the Trading Floor…what a great thing to see such an important icon of history.
4
The pedigrees of floor traders are as varied as that of of dogs. I've been standing in one pit or another at the CME or Board of Trade since the first business day of 1980. Other traders I've known, mostly men, have come from backgrounds ranging from bookies to plumbers apprentices, cowboys to farm boys, English majors (me) to MIT dropout savants, and then some who seemed to slither in having been hatched rather than born. When friends used to ask what I did, I'd answer that it was like playing speed chess in the middle of a rugby scrum: Rapid calculations made in response to a constantly changing stream of information and variables in an environment where shoving, spitting, screaming and physical intimidation were the norm. A trader had to stand his ground, and 9 out of 10 who came into the pits left to pursue some other enterprise after 6 months. It wasn't for everybody, but for those of us who survived, then thrived, it was like getting to play a marvelous game to earn a living. Though still the best means of price discovery, the pits cost dollars to the pennies of an electronic based trading platform in terms of transaction cost, and so fall victim to shareholder, rather than customer dictates. It's been a great ride and I feel lucky to have been a part of it.
38
I picture farmers in the past coming in at noon for dinner and listening to the futures market on the radio . I guess now it comes out of NYC but the connection of farmers to places far away remains the same, albeit with fewer family farmers and ,now, electronic trading.
4
To be honest, the courtyard outside the cigar store and Ceres cafe were where you'd go to score some coke. Everyone in Chicago knew that. Half the traders were trading on the side.
2
Your percentage is more than a bit high (no pun intended) - more like between 5-10%, and not the traders themselves but their clerks. Over at the Merc, on the other hand...
The descriptions of the men in the pit and the nostalgia for what is being lost makes this a very readable and interesting article but what of the actual loss of control and transparency as our trading practices slip into a dark box and leave everyone on the outside scratching their heads. Words like "complicated" slip into the jargon more and more as people in the media try and fail to explain how anything works. When the guys stood on the trading floor yelling at each other, the effort to beat the other guy to the best deal was all out in the open. Now it's inside a computer, inside a switching station or whatever hidden spot where computer code rules and intelligent thought are useless skills. If we don't understand how it works can we know what is being done in the dark? I fear this is yet another opportunity for the public to get duped, for greed to rule, for deception to lead to yet another bubble and another crash with another bunch of politicians trying to explain and fix. As for the last job, the journalist, who has only her/his questions, where pen and paper still work, and no one can ask a computer to do the job for them, although of course we all use them now.
4
A rarity it is when the working class are mentioned in the title of an article in the top newspaper in the country.
10
We're going to have to change that name, working class, when no one of that class has work any more.
5
I remember my dad telling me that as a kid in the 1920's he witnessed his much older trader brother tip a cabby five dollars which seemed fortune to my dad then.
1
Good riddance. I worked in the Mercantile Exchange building for a number of years and had to deal with the traders in the hallways, elevators, shops, etc. The traders believed that all others were beneath them and that their large incomes some how gave them special status. A rude bunch to say the least. Good bye!!!
2
We are accelerating into the Brave New World with nary a thought. Are we truly ready to deal with automation in every facet of our lives? It seems we believe that technology will solve our problems at every turn.
Certainly the argument here will be that it is only dozens of jobs that are lost but just as economists employ the multiplier effect on stimulus injections there will be a ripple effect of these jobs lost. Every job lost due to accelerating technology will have a ripple effect.
Do I wish to return to the good old days- no, but it seems we should have a plan in place. There should be some dialog before we jump into the Brave New World especially when it comes to the economy.
What about our power grid- how old is it and could it withstand an electro magnetic pulse (EMP) comparable to the one that knocked out the entire U.S. telegraph system in 1859. If we move to electronic payment systems only (no physical cash) how would we function?
Finally if we move to a fully automated system where few control the strings will we truly be living a free life or just existing in a controlled environment. We are at a crossroads and should at least pause and gather our thoughts before continuing our worshipping of everything tech.
Certainly the argument here will be that it is only dozens of jobs that are lost but just as economists employ the multiplier effect on stimulus injections there will be a ripple effect of these jobs lost. Every job lost due to accelerating technology will have a ripple effect.
Do I wish to return to the good old days- no, but it seems we should have a plan in place. There should be some dialog before we jump into the Brave New World especially when it comes to the economy.
What about our power grid- how old is it and could it withstand an electro magnetic pulse (EMP) comparable to the one that knocked out the entire U.S. telegraph system in 1859. If we move to electronic payment systems only (no physical cash) how would we function?
Finally if we move to a fully automated system where few control the strings will we truly be living a free life or just existing in a controlled environment. We are at a crossroads and should at least pause and gather our thoughts before continuing our worshipping of everything tech.
6
Some of the concerns you raise - especially power grid reliability - I share. But as I wrote above, almost everything done by humans in these trading pits can in fact be done just as well and more reliably by well-programmed computers. Moreover, the physical world interfaces, corporate complexity and political reality of the power grid problem rare several orders of magnitude more complex than organizing a series of electronic trading floors. This one happens to be an easy evaluation in favor of automation.
This article doesn't mention automation nor is it germane to the story. It's simply that traders are trading on computers instead of using hand signals in a pit.
I won't contest that the comment was not germane to the story. It was simply an attempt to throw some cold water on the path we seem to be headed. Yes, by all means computers have enhanced some aspects of life but with the good comes the bad. In my opinion the Big Brother scenario is one of the bad aspects. When everything can be tracked and managed down to every financial interaction it could become ugly. The NSA- a branch of the government has used computers in an abusive way. They themselves admit they have not thwarted any terrorism. Ask yourself if the Snowden leaks were intentional. What better way to get people to self edit then to let them know their communications are recorded. A sinister way to shut down dissent.
does this mean less CornSyrup in our food?
Only if you decide to not take delivery of "C." (Corn)
When my children were young grade-schoolers, I was always searching for unusual things to take them to see. I'm glad I was able to take them to the viewing gallery above the trading pits in the early 1990s. They still remember it. I also remember very well the traders, still wearing their coats, coming out to heckle some of we Occupiers in 2008 as we stood at the intersection of LaSalle and Jackson. They enjoyed telling us to "go get a job." (Many already worked, including me.) Karma is interesting - some of those very guys may now themselves be looking for work.
44
So you stood out there and protested against them? They have no power... Also laughing at other's calamity is never a wise thing. The very computers that are replacing them could very well replace you (that's where the real power is nowadays). Then you and your friends could very well be in the same exact ship.
5
Do you really think Occupy was protesting traders, in particular? If more people had supported Occupy, someone now might actually be planning how to deal with a future of automation, instead of despising the 47% and worshipping the owners of the means of production.
4
Not so sure about the whole Karma thing, but there are going to be whole classes of people "obsolete" faster than you can say Obamacare... I'm talking about long distance truck drivers, Pharmacists, Optometrists... pickup your mobile phone, there is more than enough computing power to perform any of those jobs, it's just a question of doting the i's and crossing the t's and when it hits, it's going to be sudden and swift.
1
In this case silence is golden.
No more high commission rates, less "slippage" in fills, no more having to scan the time and sales to see if a floor broker ripped me off, no more waiting over an hour to get a fill report, no more "paper jam" excuses, etc, etc, etc.
Good riddance.
No more high commission rates, less "slippage" in fills, no more having to scan the time and sales to see if a floor broker ripped me off, no more waiting over an hour to get a fill report, no more "paper jam" excuses, etc, etc, etc.
Good riddance.
35
Robert. You could not be more clueless. I electronically trade millions of contracts each year and have never been able to move size on the screen like I was able to in the pit. Front running is far more rampant by #HFTs than the most nefarious pit local and if you are "ripped off" by a broker, then you know how they did it and who they did it with and were able to act on that information.
9
Robert, Log on. See how you like it. A whole new set of issues.
3
true. until the Flash Boys as described in Michael Lewis' great book scam the system the way they always do.
1
As briefly mentioned, the TV people will need to keep at least a Disney style animatronic trading pit going to use as background for their business news shows. Or will the talking heads now just stand in front of a few racks of servers?
14
You've surely seen the Nasdaq "opening" and "closing"? A bunch of people clapping in front of flat screens showing pretty pictures. Absolutely ridiculous, but that never gets in the way of even mediocre TV.
2
I vote for some actual robots, with wiry blond hair shaped into ear nests, to read the news in front of your bank of servers.
3
It's called the options pits, but even that is getting close to closing. Fortunately, computers have trouble with complicated strategies and their pricing, for the moment. That may change of course, within the next ten years.
The traders can head out to Vegas, where the gambling is no more or less scientific (or manipulated) than what they currently do.
As for the futures markets, those are the places where the market makers reset the prices from what organic market action (buying/selling of retail customers) says they ought to be to what the market makers want them to be. (What other explanation can there be for the fact that S&P stock index futures trade all night long in Chicago when trading in the underlying stocks in New York stops from 8pm to 6am?)
As for the futures markets, those are the places where the market makers reset the prices from what organic market action (buying/selling of retail customers) says they ought to be to what the market makers want them to be. (What other explanation can there be for the fact that S&P stock index futures trade all night long in Chicago when trading in the underlying stocks in New York stops from 8pm to 6am?)
3
Rich: I don't know, perhaps for people in Asia to hedge and speculative based upon their local market activity.
I, or course, blame Obama. Perhaps they can add shelves to the floor and turn it into his library?
2
Obama, and his next place filler, better start thinking about what to do when they don't need any of us horses any more: watch Humans Need Not Apply on YouTube. There are a lot fewer horses now than there were in 1919. Wasn't possible to retrain them, didn't need all of them; that is our fate.
1
Perhaps I'm missing something, but it's interesting that for an occupation that drew from the working class and former school athletes, pretty much every picture of traders is all white guys. Were there no black people who fit that description, e.g., a former athlete with street smarts?
More likely is that traders, for all the talk of being "blue-collar" and a place where "anyone" could make it, had an exclusionary system of their own.
More likely is that traders, for all the talk of being "blue-collar" and a place where "anyone" could make it, had an exclusionary system of their own.
66
I remember being in Chicago outdoors- we must have been near the board of trade-- and there were indeed more than a few black people (okay, men only) milling about in trader's jackets
1
Check some pictures from Google Image back from when the pit was actually busy (not 12 dudes on break from smoking cigars). As in these pictures:
http://www.trbimg.com/img-4ffcdbd5/turbine/ct-edit-0711-outcry-jad.jpg-2...
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MI-BQ301_ICEFLO_G_201207261813...
http://www.trbimg.com/img-4ffcdbd5/turbine/ct-edit-0711-outcry-jad.jpg-2...
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MI-BQ301_ICEFLO_G_201207261813...
More misogyny - and it was highly noticeable - than racial exclusion.
3
This headline reminds me of the apocryphal one: World to End Tomorrow: Women, Minorities, and Teens to Be Most Affected!!!
3
A colorful landscape by William Alden. There is a cultural anthropology here that is lost, and the trading pits are emblematic of much of our culture. It's a world we have lost. We are all victimized by the reality in William Alden's article:
"Perhaps even more significant for Chicago is the disappearance of a career path that for over 150 years allowed scrappy teenagers and former high school athletes to hustle their way to wealth, or at least excitement. Futures trading — as distinguished from options trading, its more cerebral relative — was for many years a way for those with a blue-collar background to enter the white-collar world."
In the future there'll quickly be little need for electronic traders as well.
Alden gets at that variegated life that was engendered by work that required so many people. In my youth my father worked in a big manufacturing company in which people carried piles of invoices from desk to desk. One of those piles took to the air when Bobby Thomson slammed that ball out of the park. I'm sure that the trading floor history is replete with many such stories.
It's not to embellish work; most of us work to get enough to retire, so if it's pushing keys on a keyboard in a social vacuum, so be it. But as we change as our commercial culture changes, it's not always for the better. Today we are "on line". An entire generation knows only that with its electronic "friends". They relate to one another in their own way.
"Perhaps even more significant for Chicago is the disappearance of a career path that for over 150 years allowed scrappy teenagers and former high school athletes to hustle their way to wealth, or at least excitement. Futures trading — as distinguished from options trading, its more cerebral relative — was for many years a way for those with a blue-collar background to enter the white-collar world."
In the future there'll quickly be little need for electronic traders as well.
Alden gets at that variegated life that was engendered by work that required so many people. In my youth my father worked in a big manufacturing company in which people carried piles of invoices from desk to desk. One of those piles took to the air when Bobby Thomson slammed that ball out of the park. I'm sure that the trading floor history is replete with many such stories.
It's not to embellish work; most of us work to get enough to retire, so if it's pushing keys on a keyboard in a social vacuum, so be it. But as we change as our commercial culture changes, it's not always for the better. Today we are "on line". An entire generation knows only that with its electronic "friends". They relate to one another in their own way.
10
It would be interesting to study whether the elimination of human interaction has actually affected the movement of the markets. My guess is, yes. Just based on my own experience in other fields of endeavour, the introduction of high tech, despite all the promises to the contrary, adds an extra layer of complication, inefficiency, and frustration.
19
Well the research points to no. Trade is in fact more efficient and cheaper than it was before the advent of electronic trading.
7
Bill is grossly mistaken. The exchanges have spent over a billion dollars on servers and connectivity. If you want to talk about the cost of trading, compare the cost of a competitive computer system to the cost of a Bic pen and a deck of trading cards.
1
Bill (NYC), The electronic market is in many ways more efficient. It is faster and cheaper. But, in terms of it's primary function, price discovery, it is much less efficient.
1
It is a new age - a turning point in civilization - in commodities trading, and everywhere else. The horse and buggy are dead.
People who lose their jobs need retraining and compensation. The new generation needs a high-quality education that prepares young women and men for the jobs of the future. That takes money, money comes from taxes, and our inequalities in income and opportunity will never result in the production of the educational opportunities that we need.
We need to support progressive candidates who are willing to invest in our children's future, not reactionaries who advocate failed conservative economic policies that benefit only the wealthy few.
People who lose their jobs need retraining and compensation. The new generation needs a high-quality education that prepares young women and men for the jobs of the future. That takes money, money comes from taxes, and our inequalities in income and opportunity will never result in the production of the educational opportunities that we need.
We need to support progressive candidates who are willing to invest in our children's future, not reactionaries who advocate failed conservative economic policies that benefit only the wealthy few.
14
I'm with you except the retraining part. You can chase education until you have 5 degrees and hundreds of thousands of dollars in college loans, and still jobs will get scarcer and scarcer. How long until we need no drivers of trucks, trains, taxis, anything? How long until no clerks, cashiers, servers, food prep, pickers, cooks? How long until no more corporate lawyers, no med techs, nurses, radiologists? Landscaping, new product design, medical research; that's about it. I can't think of too many jobs that cannot be done by automation. Education will be about creativity and comfort; we'll just be around to entertain and comfort each other once all our other needs are provided by systems that never sleep, get sick, want a break, or care for families. It could be a good world, if we want it to be.
2
Road construction Blue State, they always get worse.
Where will farmers go to put a face on their fate? Their laptops?
2
It seems like the human species has been merely a placeholder until robots and computers could come along and do a better job. This makes me very, very sad.
11
I quite agree! My heart has been broken since I like you have been driven to read-and then comment-on this article online. And on a computer!
In fact I have never recovered since quill pen and parchment replaced the chisel I previously used to engrave my weighty thoughts on stone for posterity. And oh the horror when cuneiform replaced pictographs. Not to mention when the latter drove me from my profession of cave drawings.
In fact I have never recovered since quill pen and parchment replaced the chisel I previously used to engrave my weighty thoughts on stone for posterity. And oh the horror when cuneiform replaced pictographs. Not to mention when the latter drove me from my profession of cave drawings.
15
The future is "plastics"...that is all.
12
Nah. That ship has sailed.
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away...
Joltin' Joe has left and gone away...
3
A question not addressed in this piece puzzles me. These 'seats' cost tens of thousands of dollars. Are those that purchased them somehow compensated now that they are, in effect, worthless?
5
In the 90's they sold for middle six figures. But when the exchanges went public the seat owners received shares for the seats and made millions.
6
I doubt it. No different than the owner of a NYC or Chicago taxi medallion who has watched its value fall as Uber and other competitors came on scene.
They sold out when the exchange went public. I suspect management still robbed them somehow. Nonetheless I bet many are wishing they preserved the market.
You're looking good, Vinny - glad to see that you moved on up from the Merc's currencies quadrant, working for Dellsher, to shooting options over at the Board as a local. I have fond memories of my years on the trading floors, working with guys like Vince - Greg, Tony, Jerry, and the rest of them ... and even of that hideous week in the Bond Room at the CBoT that started on my 32nd birthday, Monday, 10/19/1987...
6
Love the chnage as it is great for people who can't shout, can't hustle, can't push everyone else out. Electronic exchange is great for people who spent all their days studying math, loved school, went to school to learn not to play a game and are introvert. Technology has made nerds and introverts winners, society would have never done so. This is progress! Love it!
23
Instead of having one bully who pushes everyone around in each pit. Now, we have one bully, who virtually pushes everyone around in every single market by spending more money on technology. Great progress.
2
Another technological disruption from the makers of the Internet; displace people and a way of life for the dehumanizing nature of the digital world. No thanks! We're going to rue the day we embraced this "Brave New World" of technology with such reckless abandon and absence of forethought.
34
So, why don't you write a letter to the editor and actually use a postal stamp to express your views? In addition. Every technology disrupts, perhaps we should ban car which negatively affected the rail road business.
19
Why wouldn't you want boring mindless tasks to be automated? yes they create jobs, but those jobs by and large were never that great to begin with.
5
They said the same thing during the Industrial Revolution,
6
These traders and inter-dealer brokers are everything that's wrong with the Finance industry. Good riddance.
10
Wrong. It's the stochastics scalpers and speed-trade snipers that are what's wrong with the finance industry. Open outcry leveled the playing field for all participants.
25
Trading futures in a pit is wrong? Why? Don't tell that the airlines, farmers manufactures, etc. who rely on futures and other derivatives to stabilize their inputs.
17
DJ...I'll bet people are scrambling to look for their dictionaries to look up "stochastic". Silly me...no one own a dictionary anymore.
1
Computerization, automation, robotics. No profession is immune and if anyone tells you otherwise then they have something to sell.
27
I wonder what the last job will be? Planting flowers around the emperor's tomb, maybe?
18
I don't know about the last job, but one of the last jobs will be lawyer. Some low level tasks in law have already been taken over by computers like basic research and editing. However the 'real deal' lies with very critical and abstract thinking 'outside the box', blending various disciplines into one, and arguing for or against arbitrary conclusions based on vague legalese. Finally, this is all presented to human beings like judges, juries, and businessmen, and your product affects more human beings who prefer to deal with other human beings.
I'm skeptical that technology could do all the above, but I'm biased, and I don't want to be replaced like the unfortunate traders in this article.
I'm skeptical that technology could do all the above, but I'm biased, and I don't want to be replaced like the unfortunate traders in this article.
1
Blue State, the last job will be taking care of the machines.
2
A loss of humanity, of a unique trade. A colorful reminder of an honest way to make a living, and to use your wits to navigate. All will now be digitized, clean and efficient. Progress.
10
IT IS digitized already. Closing of the building just reflects the reality
17
Honest? Hardly. Retail speculators buying one or two contracts were considered ripe for picking off by the locals.
4
The building is hardly closing. The fastest and lowest-cost traders in the world are located in that building -- many on offices that once were used for the exchange. If anything, there is now more money flowing through that building than ever. Ceres, the tobacconist, and the barber will remain open.
4
Goodbye to a dinosaur.
6
How easy it is for you to dismiss the work/ lives of those who have been there for decades.
8
You mean the ones who should have seen this coming and adapted?
1
Some of us cut out early, I myself in 2001 now it takes a year to onboard an institutional client.
This means that schools must go back to teaching a good GENERAL Education in grade school and in High School teach the skills necessary to adapt the knowledge that one already has into a new direction should the situation ( like this one) demands.