Who We Are...
SAVE THE FLOOR, INC and PROTECTING THE PITS, INC are nonprofit, nonpartisan organizations based in Chicago, IL.
We are the floor brokers and traders who create the open-outcry markets and trade the electronic platform at the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
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We believe this because of our many collective years of experience in weathering disasters natural, economic and political.
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We provide market liquidity in times of uncertainty because of our discretion and expertise as specialists in each commodity offered at CBOT and the CME.
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We, each of us, personally offset risk every day.
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We strongly oppose the decision by CME Group to include any electronic market input in the settlement price at the conclusion of daily trade sessions.
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We oppose it because it will greatly alter a method, based on volume traded via open-outcry on the close, that works well and satisfies needs of the customers that use our markets. The CME’s decision to use a blended settlement was made with no consultation of floor membership. Many customers have also indicated that they have not been surveyed as to their best interests. We are frustrated by what appears to be a lack of concern for the best method to discover the settlement prices.
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We have a very real prototype staring us in the face every day of how well electronic settlement serves the market: our failed CBOT Wheat Futures market which went to an electronic settlement 2 years ago. Since then the commercial producers have stopped using our Wheat market and have searched for alternatives. If the rest of the markets go towards an electronic settlement, it will surely mean a similar fate. Once the markets disappear, so will the jobs, as we have already seen countless firms reduce their floor presence as well as the loss of clerks and broker’s assistants due to decreased activity. The trading floors employs thousands of people. Those people patronize the businesses in the Chicago Board of Trade building as well as the business in the blocks surrounding the building. Many, many jobs would be lost and businesses effected as a direct result of settlement going electronic. Recently the Illinois State Legislature passed a tax package that benefits CME Group under the pretense that these many jobs, as many as 2000, would be safe. A large part of their decision weighed on the fact that jobs would be saved.
Employee and agricultural trader morale is down in the gutter. Floors that were once occupied with staff are now empty halls. Aisles & Booths that once filled an agricultural sales force are now caverns of silent telephones, (Yes, I KNOW THEY are BRAND NEW!) We need to stop the bleed of a workforce and intelligence that has built the Chicago Board of Trade & the Chicago Mercantile Exchange the trading center of the world... And worry for the future of the CME group of tomorrow.
Please sign the petition or write a letter, support our cause and get letters from traders and customers to strengthen our efforts.