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A comment on Turn Out the Lights, the Party’s Over. Parent comment

Re:Turn Out the Lights, the Party’s Over by minimax on Friday February 06, 2015 @11:39AM (#9009792)
I do believe it was a party in there, just not one that anyone but the most well connected and capitalized had any access to.

Except it was the exact opposite of that. The archetypal Chicago futures pit trader was a normal guy off the street, usually without a college degree, who managed to scrape together a few thousand dollars to cover the margin for a couple of contracts.

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Re:Turn Out the Lights, the Party’s Over by jsprogrammer on Friday February 06, 2015 @12:05PM (#9009970)
Were/are pit traders primarily trading their own money? My impression is that they were/are essentially hired guns for the big money on the other end of the phone.
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Re:Turn Out the Lights, the Party’s Over by minimax on Friday February 06, 2015 @12:29PM (#9010155)
In the pit you have a mixture of brokers (near the outside) who are working orders for financial institutions and other clients, and prop traders (a.k.a. "locals") who are trading their own money.
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