Sunday 24 February 2013

22nd Feb 2012 CBOT & Chicago Architecture


In Farming circles the Chicago Board of Trade is known as providing the bench mark pricing for many agricultural commodities. It is somewhere I have always wanted to visit. In recent years with the advent of electronic trading it has changed significantly. When the market opens each day it is longer quite the noisy throng that it once was. The futures pits, which are where the real action used to be are now very tame. Interestingly though the options pits are still very active, this is because of spread trading, which is very difficult to do electronically.
The Chicago Board of Trade

Corn Options pit

Corn Futures Pit
I spent the afternoon looking at some Chicago landmarks. The Millenium park pretty cool even in winter, I was told it is fantastic in summer. There are these two huge monoliths with a glass brick façade on one side, they project faces of Chicago through them, which look pretty cool. In summer they have a fountain spurting out through their mouths.



I also found the Trump tower. Don wasn’t in otherwise I would have dropped in for a quite one with him and quizzed him on management systems. I found out that originally the Trump tower was going to be the tallest building in the world, but it was scaled down after 911. (Maybe he thought it might be too much of a target)

The Trump Tower


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