Photos

S&P pit summer of 1987

Treasury bond pit 1989

LIFFE pit (unknown which one) from 1996.

Still feeling a little guilty from not posting much so figured I'd throw up some photos.  As usual click on the photo for greater detail.

Orange Juice Scene in Trading Places

Zerohedge linked this vid today as FCOJ is trading at an all time high and watching Trading Places never gets old so figured it was worth putting up here as well.

Butter and Egg Man

First let me say this is just a hunch cause I haven't seen anyone else make the same link....In the 1890s and early 1900s the term 'Butter and Egg Man' was used to describe basically a bigmouthed guy who would throw his money around.  Officially here is the definition from the OED, the bold emphasis is mine however:

(Ocford English Dictionary) butter-and-egg man U.S. slang, a wealthy, unsophisticated man who spends money freely 1926 H. C. WITWER Roughly Speaking 229 A couple of big *butter and egg men from Verona, New Jersey. 1927 Daily Express 31 Aug. 8/7 'Butter and egg man' is an American slang expression practically equal to our term 'greenhorn', that is, a man of money who spends lavishly and is an easy prey of the gold-digger and other unscrupulous persons.

Gee, that last part really sounds like a handful of floor traders I used to know!  By coincidence the CME was originally named the Chicago Butter and Egg Board when it originated in 1898 and kept the name until 1919 when it was renamed CME.  So far I haven't seen any evidence linking the original name of the CME w/this term but my thinking is they're somehow linked.

The usage of the term Butter and Egg Man was so widespread that Louis Armstrong recorded a song which captured the spirit of these guys as targets for gold-diggers. 

"Now she wants...a butter an egg man
From way out in the West
She wants somebody...who's workin' all day
So she's got money...when she wants to play"

Seriously I think I'm onto something with the link but no evidence so far!

Cockney slang

Big thanks to John Moore for sharing this recent article on cockney slang used in the City of London as some old LIFFE traders I've talked to mentioned the slang but didn't know the origins or sometimes meanings. The link for the entire article is below and listed here are the numbers which I heard were used on the LIFFE floor.

Modern trading killing off "barrow boy" market slang

NUMBERS:

A SPANIARD - 1 - From the Spanish name Juan

A PRICKLY - 2  - A prickly pear

A CARPET - 3 - UK prisoners used to be allowed carpet in their cells after 3 years

LADY GODIVA - 5 - Rhymes with fiver

AYRTON - 10 - Tenner rhymes with Ayrton Senna, the late racing car driver

A BULLY - 50 - From the 50-point bullseye on a dartboard

A MONKEY - 500 - The 500-Indian rupee note used to have a picture of a monkey on it

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*I'll also note/apologize for not posting much the past couple months.  Besides moving, I've been busy trading, learning new software, switching clearing firms, constantly traveling, etc.... but now hope to get the blog going a little bit more although the distractions listed still remain.

Remember the Roar

Sorry I haven't been posting in a while as I've been traveling w/my wife a lot and a few days ago we came across something which is probably the closest equivalent to a busy trading floor.  There are two roars which I'll never forget, the most memorable is from seeing the Blackhawks play at old Chicago Stadium while the second was the sound of walking onto the trading floor when it was busy and of the two, memories of the latter were brought back in the most unlikely place.

We were just in the Philippines and attended a cockfight, known locally as sabong, and after walking in the entrance below the arena, the roar brought me back to when the trading pits were busy.  I mentioned to my local buddy that it's amazing how excited everyone is for the fight in progress and he said no, that roar is from all the betting.  Sure enough when we walked up to our seats in the balcony, the noise was deafening and visually was also amazing as betting is done w/a series of handsignals across the arena.

Just like the trading floors there were middle man to broker bets, known as cristos (ironically the Latin name for Christ but sometimes spelled w/a K to differentiate) and for instance split a $200 bet into smaller bets like $40, $60, $50, $50.  However unlike the trading pits, every transaction is done by memory so nothing is written down and every bet is settled immediately after each cockfight in cash which is rolled up and thrown across the arena.  This is probably the reason why no beer is sold in the arena.

Cockfighting is big business in the Philippines and the current 8 cock derby (each entrant has 8 roosters) we attended had a $750,000 USD pot for the winner.  To get up to that kind of money, the derby runs 24 hours a day for about a week, involves about 2400 roosters and is simulcast on tv.  I didn't realize how big it was until we got to the door and paid $20-$30 each for admission which is a big amount in the Philippines.  Here's a 2 minute phone video of the action and to give perspective, we were there about 6pm and heard by midnight it's standing room only.  A longer 4 minute video can also be seen by clicking here.

Chicago's decade of innovation: 1972-1982 (article)

It's amazing how most traders take the origin and development of various futures contracts for granted considering the ingenuity it took to launch them in first place.  Fortunately the FT's Chicago correspondent Hal Weitzman wrote the following article for the World Federation of Exchange's monthly magazine earlier this year which puts into focus the decade of 1972-82 when the financial futures were developed and launched in Chicago.  The article, Chicago's Decade of Innovation 1972-1982, is perfect for holiday week reading as it's short enough to condense the decade's achievements but long enough to properly explain the circumstances which lead to their creation.  From the introduction,

"Yet between 1972 and 1982, Chicago’s futures exchanges effectively created modern financial derivatives markets. In a decade-long burst of radical innovation, the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange – its younger and smaller rival –introduced a string of new financial derivatives that completely transformed the city, its exchanges and the entire world of finance. Beginning with the creation of the International Monetary Market in 1972, followed by the birth of the Chicago Board Options Exchange in 1973, through the introduction of Government National Mortgage Association (“Ginnie Mae”) Mae futures in 1975, futures on US Treasury bills in 1976, US Treasury bond futures in 1977, Eurodollar futures in 1981 and capped by the creation of index-based derivatives and options on futures in 1982, this decade of innovation laid the foundation of modern finance. It marked a critical paradigm shift, opening up the world of derivatives to the power of trading financial instruments and making the broader financial world aware of the importance of derivatives."

Full article linked:
Chicago's decade of innovation: 1972-1982

Reality weirder than fiction

After a guy rogue trades his way to destroying a CBOT clearing firm in 1992, what could possibly be the second act for him????

photo and story from VancouverNewsBlog.com

Run for mayor of Vancouver with his campaign based in the Occupy Vancouver tent city, noting that he's the only homeless candidate in the election.