Pork belly trading pit slaughtered
NEW ZEALAND - The once raucous pork-belly trading pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, featured in the 1980s Dan Aykroyd-Eddie Murphy comedy Trading Places, will fall silent, swept aside by the rush to do business on screens.
3 September 2007
2 minute read
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| During its heyday, the pork belly pit drew speculators from as far away as Saudi Arabia. |
It will be the passing of an era, another step in Chicago's evolution from Hog Butcher for the World to a top financial centre with the US$12 billion ($17.1 billion) July merger of the CME and Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) into the world's largest derivatives market.
"It used to be the most tradeable market in the world in its heyday," said Bill Cipolla, who traded pork belly futures for 25 years before switching to another market. The CME-CBOT combined company, CME Group said this week that frozen pork belly futures and options will exclusively trade on its electronic platform from May 2008.
Pit trading of frozen pork belly futures, introduced in the 1960s, has been slowly dying amid changes in the food industry and pork production that began in the 1990s.
