Veterans have seen trades slow to a trickle in the pits, but they’re still tossing things out; ‘It’s just habit now.’ An open-outcry Chicago pit in 2010. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images By Benjamin Parkin and Benjamin Parkin The Wall Street Journal BiographyBenjamin Parkin @b_parkyn benjamin.parkin@wsj.com Patrick McGroarty Patrick McGroarty The Wall Street Journal BiographyPatrick McGroarty @patmcgroarty Google+ Patrick.McGroarty@wsj.com April 10, 2018 11:19 a.m. ET One morning, between messaging clients about corn options, broker’s assistant Jeff Coleman rummaged through his pockets and discarded the contents on the floor of Chicago’s trading pits. Scribble-covered note paper. McDonald’s receipts. He sucked on cough drops to pass the time and let the wrappers float down to his feet like a tiny ticker-tape parade. He was partaking in a longstanding tradition at the exchange: littering. Mr. Coleman remembers being taken aback by the piles of scrap paper he found when he came to work in the open-outcry pits in the 1980s. “That freaked me out at first,” he said. “You wouldn’t do it in your own house.” A Chicago tradition Veterans of Chicago’s exchanges have watched trade slow to a trickle in the pits where they jostle to buy and sell contracts for cattle, wheat and interest rates. Many of the quirks of doing business there have faded, too. Electronic trading has led to the closure of formerly paper-strewn trading floors around the world. At the New York Stock Exchange, the habit of tossing waste paper aside has waned as traders execute deals through handheld devices instead. In Chicago, headsets and tablets long ago overshadowed the arcane language of hand signals they created to communicate their trades across the din. The platform shoes some traders wore to see over their peers fell victim to safety concerns. A strict dress code was relaxed after some traders took to slinging loose ties over polo shirts or refused to change clothes for days on a hot streak. But amid all the change, they aren’t tossing out the practice of indiscriminately tossing things out. As more trading moves online, the trash is a tangible testament to their continued presence in the pits. Traders who remain there say negotiating openly in the octagonal pits is an important counterpoint to computerized deal-making. Traders in Chicago in 2011. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images Discarded notes, newspapers and candy wrappers accumulate outside trash cans stationed throughout the cavernous trading floor. Some traders, brokers and clerks risk hefty fines to sneak snacks and takeout onto the floor, where food is banned, and make little effort to hide the packaging. “It’s just habit now,” said P.J. Quaid, a corn-options broker who has worked on the floor—and tossed aside ripped-up notes there—for around 20 years. “Wherever it lands, it lands.” The habit has its roots in the days when Chicago’s trading pits were crammed with hundreds of shouting futures and options traders. Participants at the world’s top commodity exchanges didn’t have time to worry about anything other than striking the best deal for foodstuffs including pork bellies, wheat and eggs. “These were not people who were going to take the time to wiggle and fight their way out of a crowded pit, and give up their spots, to carefully and responsibly throw something away in a trash can,” said Emily Lambert, author of “The Futures,” a history of commodity trading in Chicago. Older traders remember deliberately dropping completed order tickets onto the floor rather than handing them to colleagues so they could move quickly to the next trade. Larry Schneider, a retired third-generation veteran of Chicago’s commodity trade, started work as a runner in 1970, scooping up completed cards from the floor at the edge of the pits and running them back to his brokerage firm’s desk. “You got a lot of exercise back then,” he said. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1986. Photo: Mark Reinstein/ZUMA PRESS The Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange merged in 2007 to form CME Group Inc. and consolidated their trading floors into one. Trading volumes have risen to record highs, but most trading is electronic now. A cheese auction was among the most recent markets to move online from a live trading pit last June. “We’re still buying and selling corn. We’re still buying and selling bonds,” said Scott Shellady, managing director of TJM Europe LLP, who started on the floor in the 1980s. “But I’m doing it right now in front of six computer screens instead of 600 traders. It’s not nearly as much fun.” The pits that remain are quiet and orderly in comparison. Some traders fiddle with their phones and chat as they wait for customers to call in orders. On one day last week, one trader said many of his peers were off watching the Masters golf tournament. Traders who remain say there is less mess than there used to be, but there are still stacks of paper on hand for recording the trades that do come in. One morning, the remnants of several hours of buying and selling derivatives of everything from hogs to stock indexes were scattered on the exchange’s floor. Scraps of paper covered in arithmetic. A Red Bull can. Nut shells. A broker halfheartedly tossed a handful of papers at a trash can, and missed. Another launched an empty gum packet at no particular target. Asked how she typically disposed of detritus in the wheat pit, Kitty Shipp said, “We just go like this—watch,” and threw a handful of paper over her head. Scott Shellady in 2015. Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press Brad Lietzke, a clerk, said peers disabused him of his aversion to littering soon after he arrived at the dairy pit several years ago. “I’ve got to fit in,” he said. Now he worries he couldn’t shake the bad habit. “It’d be weird working at an office because I’d be throwing my papers on the ground.” CME declined to comment beyond its rule book, which explicitly prohibits the discarding of refuse on escalators, elevators, hallways and lobbies. “Commonly accepted standards of propriety and decorum apply to everyone on the trading floor,” the rules state. Some veterans said the exchange had tried to discourage water bottles, but relented amid concerns that traders shouting their orders would get hoarse. Take a Look at Other Recent A-Heds What’s a Tough Call in Bird Watching? Identifying a Gull Will Office Affairs Ever Be the Same? Not in Romance Novels Sloths Hot, Armadillos Not: Zoos Seek Affection for Overlooked Species Food is still verboten, though. Some traders sneak around security guards to get snacks onto the floor. One recalled being fined $250 for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. In February, CME sent a reminder that food and beverages other than water, gum and hard candy were prohibited on the floor and violations were punishable by fines up to $5,000. A couple of months earlier, one group ducked into a corner of the exchange floor to feast on Alaskan king crab legs and prime rib sandwiches they had delivered from a downtown steakhouse. Mr. Quaid, the corn broker, said lunching was essential to keep trading activity going, lest the few remaining traders venture out for food during the five-hour session. “You have to feed them,” he said. “It’s half the battle on slow days. You need to keep people here to make the market.”
If you are allowed to eat at your desk at corporate jobs, you should be able to eat on the trading floors which is really those traders' "desk" at their trading jobs. That no-food rule from CME is just unreasonable and inhuman. If somebody who has health problem and get seriously injured or died because they weren't allowed to eat due to this ridiculous rule, CME would've been facing major lawsuit. Good thing there is limited pit trading nowadays.
I wonder who are the people who still place orders through these floor traders who are slower, more prone to mistakes and cost more compared to the machines. I hope most of these floor traders will be able to make a successful transition to electronic trading.
the parents of these floor traders never made them clean up their rooms as little boys. from above to this expected result. the more things change the more they remain the same.