Another Old Hutch article

Thanks to Chris Willinghurst for the contribution of linking the following article:

Sketch of Old Hutch The Chicago Speculator Who Cornered Wheat from the Pittsburgh Press, October 4, 1888.

Trading floor union

I should've posted this on May Day.....but there was a workers union for those who worked on the trading floor in Brazil at the BM&F in Sao Paulo which is now closed and a fully electronic market as of June 2009. The Sindicato dos Trabalhadores no Mercado de Capitais do Estado de São Paulo translates from Portuguese into English as "Union of the Workers in the Stock market of the State of São Paulo" and they even have a website which I linked on the union name above.

I got to visit the BM&F a few times and the most distinctive thing I remember was that there were ZERO women who worked on the trading floor. Brazilian women would be far too much of a distraction to get any work done so I can understand why there were none on the floor.

The following Bloomberg story does a good job describing the closure of the BM&F pits and is linked:
Brazilian Futures Pit Empties as Open Outcry Ends in ‘Sadness’

Floored the movie review

I finally was able to see Floored over the weekend and if I had to sum up the movie in one word it'd be "honest" and in many respects brutally honest regarding how some people were depicted. A lot of the characters and subjects didn't hold back their thoughts and feelings even though I felt it doesn't represent the majority of traders or ex-traders. The characters were certainly 'characters' and another reason why reality is much better than fiction because you couldn't invent some of them if they didn't already exist. It's definitely worth seeing the movie during the rest of the week in Chicago if possible and worth purchasing a DVD in June once it's available.

A few random thoughts on it:

- It was apparent that a lot of work and thought went into the movie and the finished product was worth the wait.
- The floor traders depicted were mostly outright traders who I believe in general are a dying breed, truly the end of a era as most traders now do correlations and spreads.
- It was unsaid that the difficulty w/moving to the screen is that it's incredibly competitive to get trades and as Charlie D. said, that's 75% of the battle. Often on the screen I'm reminded of a line in a movie I heard, "It's like prison sex, the kind you get you don't want and the kind you want you don't get." That is what it's like trying to get good trades on the screen and different from the floor.
- The movie did seem to have an perspective of depicting the downside of the move to the screen and didn't do good enough to show the benefits which have come from electronic trading. The pit was great back in the day but the market is much, much better to be on the screen in order to serve the function of price discovery.
- I've heard that the pit reporter Ron who is shown late in the movie died shortly after being laid off. I traded up by him when I first came into the pit and he was a nice guy, really sad situation how it all ended.

A Former Blackhawk Braves Chicago's Pits

A Former Blackhawk Braves Chicago's Pits

One of the most interesting things about the trading floor was the varied backgrounds of all the traders. In honor of the Blackhawks playoff run, the above title is linked to a 1997 Chicago Tribune article on former Blackhawk player Troy Murray and his entrance into the S&P 500 pit at the CME. His badge was CUP, because he won the Stanley Cup with Colorado in 1996.

Trading jackets

Every segment of the trading floor community was affected by the move to electronic trading and that includes vendors such as trading jacket manufacturer PECO who reinvented their company from focusing on custom trading jackets to a create custom chef wear line entitled Culinary Classics. Very inspiration news story below of how the reinvention happened and nice to see they were able to just as many traders have in other manners.

One note is that at 0:34 in the video you'll notice that some clerks have their jacket pulled over their nose which is one way to help mask the smell of someone's fart. You really had to spend a lot of time on the floor to understand how frequent that occurred.

Poll results

Well I didn't get much feedback (thanks to those that did) so I'll just resume posting at my regular apathetic pace.

Poll

I'll be traveling and as Blogger is blocked by the destination country's firewall, there won't be any posting for the next few weeks. Having had this blog up for about 18 months, I figure now is a good time to ask for feedback as to what all the readers are looking for. Some examples:
-books on exchanges (cause I've got all those)
-books on pit traders (cause I've got all those as well)
-pictures of the trading pit (cause I've got hundreds of those)
-more memorabilia (cause I've got that)
-videos (hard to find but I can)
-personal stories of funny stuff I saw on various trading floors
-art (or which more is being made)

This blog is generally for me to share but it's always nice to get requests and of the handful I've corresponded with, it's always been rewarding so either leave a comment below (anonymously if you wish, no registration is required) or email me: tradingpithistory 'at' gmail.com

The only thing I don't want this to be is a "how to trade" blog because there are millions of those on the web, albeit that 99.9% are run by shills. I know how annoying it is for blogs not too update frequently and I'm guilty of that and want to do more. Trading has kept me busy but a number of great things will continue to roll out shortly, namely the Chicago handsignal print, SIMEX handsignals photos, and more postings on books/photos if requested. Eventually this blog will merge onto tradingpithistory.com but there are some projects to finish before that.