he's just giving the play by play on the price basically. a "handle" is the whole number value, so when he says "down 65 handles" S&P futures are trading 65.00

he's just giving the play by play on the price basically. a "handle" is the whole number value, so when he says "down 65 handles" S&P futures are trading 65.00 points under the closing price from yesterday. in the pit they generally refer to just the unit place and the decimal value: "5 evens" = xxx5.00, "seven halves" are xxx7.50, "seventy evens" == xx70.00 (in this case it was 1070.00 in the SP 500 future price). when he says "figure bid at oh five" at the end, figure refers to a hundreds handle, (in this case it was 1100), so the two sided market was 1100.00@1100.05. I'm shocked that he's saying its the craziest he's ever seen because it was like that in about the same duration about 2 years ago. one morning S&P's printed down 80 handles or so in a few minutes and came all the way back up just like yesterday.