CBOT® Chairman Nicolas J. Neubauer said, "With our Electronic Open Outcry Market, we are allowing customer orders to get in and out of the trading pit in seconds and at a lower cost. Our goal is to replace orders on our floor with e-tickets, (electronic routed orders) directly to the broker in the trading pits. We are making solid progress on this initiative and we have already eliminated more than 5 million pieces of paper on the trading floor, making our markets more efficient.
Further, local trading handheld technology will be introduced during the first quarter 2002. Deploying local trader technology is our final component in our plan to streamline open auction market operations."
The CBOT® order routing system earned a 99.9% reliability record during 2001 and no trading interruptions were experienced since the system upgrade in May.
In CBOT®'s open auction markets during 2001, just over 5 million customer orders were electronically sent directly to brokers in the pit. Nearly 1.7 million of those orders were filled. This represents a 38% increase in electronic tickets sent and a 44% increase in electronic tickets filled than during 2000. At the end of the year, the exchange had more than 40 member firms utilizing its electronic order routing system, a 54% increase from the number of firms using the system in January 2001.
The exchange also witnessed a significant increase in its membership seat prices in 2001. A Full Membership seat, which allows the holder to trade all CBOT® products, sold for $415,000 at the end of 2001, up 39% from $297,500 at end of 2000. An Associate Membership, which allows the holder to trade CBOT® financial products, sold for $121,000, up 95% from $62,000 at the end of 2000.
