http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/breaking/breakingnewsarticle.asp?feed=OBR&Date=20030525&ID=2580866 [Its happening faster than I thought.] "Early next year, there's a strong possibility that you'll see electronic trading of grains ... a mini-grain contract,'' during the day when the pits are open for business, said John Lothian, president of the electronic trading division with The Price Futures Group in Chicago. "There's tremendous customer demand for it,'' he said. [Grain traders are spread traders, something which emini traders hardly ever do.] While financial futures traders look at what's happening shorter term, grain traders try to look over the horizon. CBOT grain pits every day trade many thousands of contracts in pairs or "spreads'' between delivery months sometimes more than a year into the future, buying one and selling another in unison. "Replicating what you see in the pit, especially when you're doing a wide variety of calendar spreads and intermarket spreads and old-crop/new-crop and complicated option strategies -- getting that on a screen and getting the liquidity to move there takes time,'' said Steve Assimos, North American execution manager at Cargill Investor Services, a big futures brokerage.
Isn't the CME trying electronic trading with other traditionally pit traded products like lean hogs and japanese yen? It doesn't seem to be working for those markets though.