Floored: The Pit

Enter a world where pandemonium reigns and reckless ambition rules: the trading floors in the financial canyons of downtown Chicago. Here, men use strange hand signals to buy and sell everything from pork belly to soybeans while wearing the weight of our complex economy on their shoulders - along with their neon jackets.

It's a physical, bruising place, one where a slight gain creates heroes, rich beyond what their high school educations should ever afford. But the wrong move on the wrong day can ruin lives. At a time when millions have lost fortunes in the fickle stock market and fear abounds about the faltering financial system, "Floored" is an honest look behind the curtain of the trading floor that few have ever seen.

Floored captured this sea change that turned the world upside down for many who had been extremely successful on the floor but couldn’t, or just didn’t want to, make the move to computerized trading. No doubt there are many success stories, but this is not their story.

For the most part, the movie tells the tale of a group of floor traders who describe in their own words how their world got smaller. In a business where Darwinism is a basic tenet, this movie shows the stark reality of what happened to those who couldn’t adapt.

Many younger traders, of course, are hip to the new technology, but “Floored” isn’t interested in them; it’s the old-schoolers on the way out who are its focus. The stories of this dying breed are fascinating.

Among them is that of Mike Walsh, a foulmouthed, barrel-chested floor trader with a big house and a taste for hunting big game in Africa; Kenny Ford, a gruff 51-year-old vigorously but vainly opposed to e-trading; and Jeff Ansani, who took a colossal loss in one trade in 1994 and is now a mere clerk and divorced father encouraging a son to enter the market but to learn computers too.

These are brawny, profane, beer-drinking, cigar-smoking men, some prosperous, others breaking or broken. Their turf, like Chicago, is tough and passionate: a trading floor, fast vanishing under their feet.

The Open Outcry

Open Outcry is a fascinating look at the high-speed, high-power trading floor of Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Director Jon Else explores a hectic, noisy, seemingly chaotic workplace with his signature style and eschewing narration in favor of real-time shots that bring the viewer right into the action of the trading floor.

The show paints a compelling picture of sudden wealth, sudden disaster, and grace under pressure as traders exchange billions of dollars in futures and options contracts. It is also a portrait of an endangered environment, as digital revolution has eliminated the open outcry system at many of the world's financial exchanges.

This film portrays understandably nervous young clerks learning the open outcry trading system, with its seemingly senseless language and hand signals, hoping to one day make a fortune. The film captures this roller coaster rocketing through billions a day that makes the Merc one of the most fascinating spots on the global financial map.

CME Floor Tour

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) 'the merc' is the largest futures exchange in the United States and second largest exchange in the world for the trading of futures and options on futures based in Chicago and located at 20 S. Wacker Drive. The CME was founded in 1898 and originally, the exchange was a non-profit organization.

The Merc demutualized in November 2000, went public in December 2002, and merged with the Chicago Board of Trade in July 2007 to become a designated contract market of the CME Group Inc., which operates both markets. On August 18, 2008, shareholders approved a merger with the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and COMEX.

The Merc, CBOT, NYMEX and COMEX are now markets owned by the CME Group. The Visitors Center guides through history of CME as well as the development of futures industry and its affect on the economy.

After 167 years, the CME closed most of the Futures Pits at the CBOT on Monday July 6th 2015. S&P 500 futures pits will remain open.