The exchange, whose trading pits were destroyed, was back in operation in Queens six days later.
Before that, she reported for Reuters and Knight-Ridder Financial News in the futures trading pits of Chicago.
It makes no sense to keep old-fashioned trading pits when technology lets anyone trade from a terminal anywhere.
This is Lavender's 28th year in Chicago's trading pits, which means he has been yelling and flashing signals here for one-sixth of the exchange's colorful history.
Why, he asks, shouldn't chemical or fertilizer companies, long on the sidelines of the world's trading pits, easily buy and sell contracts to manage risk, much as farmers do?
Day-trading speculators in the pits who depend on open outcry for their livelihood aren't about to vote themselves out of a job.
But last month, when the French futures exchange, Matif, opened electronic markets alongside its pits, trading in short-term interest-rate contracts quickly migrated to the computers.
And yet, within CBOT's own pits, trading in ag futures and options still hangs on--one of two such areas--amounting to 16% of the total volume on the exchange.
In June the Matif exchange in Paris shut its futures pits after electronic trading took away almost all of their trading volume.
At the same time, it promised to keep the pits open until trading volume became insignificant, spruced up its electronic trading software, passed out 250 handhelds to traders, opened a computer room so that floor brokers and traders can practice online trading and courted electronic trading groups popping up worldwide.
Paramount was the question of whether there was still room on the floors, in the pits, and at the trading screens for human beings.
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Chairman of TransMarket Group, a trading and investment firm, Cahnman says the pits are a financial drain on the exchange.
Outside the options pits, HPQ is seeing some rather bullish block trading activity.
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The pits churn with shouting traders and the confetti of trading slips.
In 1992 the Merc launched electronic trading, but gradually so as not to roil floor brokers who would one day have to give up the pits.
Electronic trading has opened the markets to traders from far-flung locations, not just limiting it to those in the pits.
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