End of an Era in Commodity Trading
13.01.2016Company: Amcham
Fast development of IT heavily influenced the exchange trading, specifically trading with commodities. For centuries, the commodity trading was strongly linked to open outcry trading. Remember movies about the Wall Street traders and their shouting and gestures to transfer buy and sell orders.
The world's oldest futures and options exchange Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) was established in 1848. The open outcry trading has always been an inherent part of it. However, in 1992 CBOT introduced GLOBEX, the electronic trading. This implied a mass popularization of exchange trading and a vast increase of traders as well as trading instruments. As a consequence, early 2015 the CME Group made an inevitable announcement: “CME Group will close most of its futures trading pits in Chicago and New York by July 2, 2015.” This is a real end of an important era in commodity trading. Something that everybody expected and nobody could imagine.
The New York stock exchange trading floor in September 1963, before the introduction of electronic readouts and computer screens.
Author: Romana Křížová, successful commodity trader and owner of TradeandFinance.eu, s.r.o.
