<OT>
Hi Train Guy,
Your CME futures related post sure did bring back a flood of memories... some good, some bad, but unless I somehow missed it, didn't touch upon the unique jargon employed by the pit traders when their hands were busy holding orders and/or noting their every transaction on CME furnished trade record cards that required all "buys, qty, price and opposing broker/firm" to be on one (blue) side and all "sales", qty, price and opposing broker/firm" on the other (red) side of the card.
Obviously, this was a time consuming procedure and as a result, strict attention to hand signals were rarely used in my day and the great majority of trades were made via "open outcry" which had it's own set of "rules" that, in fact, superseded those rules that pertained to "hand signals."
The most important, imo, was the 'at means sell' and 'on means buy rule', because if you erred on that one you were likely to be responsible in $$$ for your mistake.
This has already gone much farther than I intended and if you have gotten this far, I'll try to wrap it up with an example of the difference between "at" and "on."
OK, you're in the porkbelly pit and the bellies are trading at $40.30 (cents/lb) and if you wanted to buy 20 contracts at that price you would turn your palms (tho often filled with paperwork) inward and yell "20 on 30" until you either get your $40.30 buy completed or the price changes to another level (bellies normally trade in 2.5 cent increments although the "half" is dropped from the outcry for reasons of expediency). Thus, in a rising market the bidding would go "20 on 30" and then "20 on 32, 20 on 35, 20 on 37, 20 on 40" and so on.
To sell 20 contracts at the 40.30 price would require the palms to face outward while yelling "40 at 30" until the order is either filled or the market moves out of range.
One not so humorous incident that comes to mind in this regard occured shortly after one of the floor runners from the firm I cleared my trades through forced me to take a couple of tokes from his hand rolled Columbian "redbud" laden cigarette (I believe they were called joints back then) in the stairwell next to the trading floor and which I believe to this day was the cause of me, shortly after, inadvertently reversing the "on" buy mantra to a sell though clearly indicating my intent to buy by virtue of my inwardly turned hands.
When the error was discovered the following morning because the trade didn't clear the computer match program, I found to my dismay and eventual sorrow that my drug crazed state cost me a tad over $18K.
Needless to say, I was so upset that I was sorely tempted to return the dime bag that the same runner forced me to buy. <g>
Boy, do I have stories.... the problem is that usually nobody knows what the heck I'm talking about so I rarely bother. <sigh>
If you're still here.... thanks for listening! You must be a very patient person.
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