Technology and progress bypass Chicago's pit traders

Chicago

TECHNOLOGY has long benefited Chicago's futures exchanges, historians say, even though electronic trading is the final blow for its human brokers, rendering obsolete the "open-outcry" futures pits on the trading floor where they have worked for generations.

CME Group Inc plans to close most of these pits as early as July 6, in favour of all-electronic trading, after floor-based volumes fell to 1 per cent of total business. Options pits will remain open.