Trading Pit Hand Signals

The advent of electronic trading has shuttered virtually every futures trading floor in the world, putting an end to the 150-year reign of the open outcry trading pit—those disorderly, deafening places where massive volumes of commodities could be bought or sold with a gesture.


Trading Pit Hand Signals is a retrospective look at the history and function of open outcry trading pits with a specific focus on the trading floors of Chicago, New York, London, Paris and Singapore. Using engaging portrait photography of former pit traders, Trading Pit Hand Signals catalogs the hand signals that made commodities futures trading possible.

 

Researched and written by a former pit trader who utilized the hand signals during his early career on various trading floors, Trading Pit Hand Signals records the history and sometimes ribald humor of the financial industry’s most fascinating “lost language.”