Limit Up the movie

1989 saw the release of the movie Limit Up which can't even be found on DVD today as only old VHS copies and a digital download from amazon is available.

Rather than summerize it in complete, here's: Robert Ebert's 2 star review

Some notes that I'll add after a recent viewing:

- The exchange focuses on the soybean market and is implied to be the CBOT but is named The Midwest Grain Exchange in the movie.

- As Roger Ebert noted, a handful of traders must've flown out to LA to work in the movie because the trading pit scenes were rather accurate with a just a couple minor exceptions. I even saw a CME badge or two in the movie amongst the faux CBOT badges.

- There is a bit of tension between the main character who is an aspiring hard working trader who sells her soul outright and another female clerk who strips for her boss. This just proves the movie is complete fiction because that would NEVER happen in real life.

- There were some Amish guys in the visitors gallery which is kinda funny because Charlie D. mentioned he used to see them up there around the same time period.

- The final trading pit scene was like Ghostbusters comes to the trading pit, that's how bizarre parts of the movie got.

- A big focus of the movie is on starvation so the main character keeps the price of beans from soaring and thus preventing world starvation.

-Soundtrack by John Tesh including a song he wrote "Soybean Shuffle"

My verdict is it's not great but not horrible although only worth watching for a trading floor enthusiast.

CBOT rogue trader

It was a low point in the history of the CBOT when the scumbag Darrell Zimmerman blew up a clearing firm in 1992 with nothing more than a bad check in his account while he tried to muscle the bond contract. It's almost defies belief that a person like him was allowed to stick around the trading floor but in actuality the floor was filled with people like him. One thing I've learned is to never deal with a desperado and it's clear in the article he went for it because he had nothing to lose. The article is pretty long and might be worth printing out to read but it's certainly worth reading.

The Chicago Reader published the following article on October 3, 1996:
Busted
A rogue trader's path from the pits to prison in 25 steps

The author is Ted C. Fishman who was a former floor trader and author of the recent release China Inc.

Chicago handsignal print

As previously mentioned, the Chicago handsignal print is finished, signed by the illustrator Mike Nudelman, and we're just waiting for a paypal cart to get setup on tradingpithistory.com before we can roll them out for sale. If anyone doesn't want to wait, contact the project at: tradingpithistory@gmail.com to reserve one of the 500 printed up.

The Big Hitters by Kevin Koy

A lot of people think of Market Wizards as the first book in it's style to have interviews with leading traders and that is incorrect because in 1986 Kevin Koy published The Big Hitters: Interviews with The World's Foremost Market Movers and the list of interviewees is:

Richard Dennis
Clayton Yeutter
Tom Willis and Bob Jenkins
Richard Sandor
David Heuwetter
Brian Monieson
Tom Baldwin
Charlie Andrews
Robert Prechter
J. Peter Steidlmayer

The Big Hitters was published by Intermarket Publishing which also published a magazine called Intermarket. If anyone has any or knows where I can find some, please let me know because I can't find them anywhere.

Kevin Koy was also the coauthor with Pete Steidlmayer of Markets and Market Logic.

Anyways, there are a limited number of copies of The Big Hitters in the $30 range still available on the internet and I figure it'll get more scarce as time goes on.

A Deal in Wheat by Frank Norris

"A Deal in Wheat" is a 1903 short story by Frank Norris, author of The Pit, which I found interesting and worth a quick read. After getting whipsawed trading, a buddy and I used to complain that the market will get ya comin' and goin' which certainly is what happens to the subject in the short story. Very quick read, about 20 widespaced pages and available if you click here.

LIFFE trading floor closes

LIFFE photo linked from BBC

In reading up a bit more about the LIFFE trading floor closing, I found the following articles which I felt were worth linking:

"The end of Liffe as we know it" from The Independent Thursday, 6 August 1998

"Bleak futures for Liffe locals as pits close" also from The Independent Sunday, 15 August 1999

A snippet from the second article gave me a good laugh cause it was the only good word I've ever heard about Chicago traders:

CBOT financial floor video June 1998

Short clip of the CBOT financial floor in June 1998, around it's heyday. Pretty amazing that it looked like that everyday. While on a roadtrip before starting at the KCBT, I stopped by the CBOT in the same month and knew upon seeing it that I needed to get to Chicago to work there and did just over a year later. The clip is 'rights managed' so I can't embed it and can only link it:

http://www.thoughtequity.com/video/clip/1B08158_0014.do