CME Group Opens Command Center
March 26, 2010
There is enough wire in it to wrap around the Earth twice. Thre are 2,100 computer and television monitors to manage or view what’s going on. All in 35,000 square feet.
It’s the new global command center of the CME Group, which opened Thursday in Chicago.
The new center for the world’s largest operator of derivatives marketplaces represents a move away from “open-outcry” trading to electronics, which handles most trading today. The center will operate around the clock, handling billions of dollars in trades every day, according to the group whose acronym stems from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The group also operates the Chicago Board of Trade and the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Chicago Mayor Richad Daley, in marking the occasion, noted that the CME along with the Chicago Board Options Exchange and 1,700 trading firms conducts twice as much trading each day, all told, than occurs in New York and nearly as much as all European exchanges combined. Roughly 40 percent is now conducted by a new Windy City electronically-driven specialty, high-frequency trading firms based in Chicago but operating globally.
At the same time, the CME showed a more agriculturally-based expansion in its trading. The group announced its plans to launch futures and options on futures contracts in skimmed milk powder, beginning May 9.
