Tour of the Floor, Rick Santelli and the Chicago Tea Party

So I somewhat forgot to post this; but the other week at work I got a tour of the floor! It was pretty awesome to actually be down there at the Board of Trade. They have undergone a number of changes since the whole CME group merger thing. Basically they have one room where all of the commodities are traded like grains and a second room that is connected where they trade the financials like interest rates and currencies. The futures pits are apparently much more empty than they used to be as much of this trading has gone electronic. But the options pit is still very full as many option strategies are still too complicated to do all electronically or the clients don’t want their whole trade to be seen on the screen by others and would thus rather have their trades done on the floor.

Here was the best part of it though, I actually got to walk right past Rick Santelli! He is a reporter for CNBC and reports directly from the floor there. In hindsight I wish I would have shaken his hand or something but it looked like he was getting ready for his segment. What is so cool too is that he has recently gotten a lot of attention for his “rant heard around the world” on CNBC a few weeks ago. You can view it below:



Finally, some people in Chicago actually put some legs on his words and held a small “tea party” right downtown at the Daley Civic Plaza. Apparently there were well over 500 people protesting the bailouts and stimulus packages. Here is just one video on youtube, but there are plenty more if you search for “Chicago Tea Party."



If I would have known about it I would have gone to check it out; oh well, perhaps I can get to the next one.