> I would guess that when an industry gets as disrupted as pit trading was, then the center of gravity would tend to move. In this case, Chicago did well to han

> I would guess that when an industry gets as disrupted as pit trading was, then the center of gravity would tend to move. In this case, Chicago did well to hang onto it. Absolutely. At the beginning of 1997, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) had 65% of the market for trading German Government Bond futures (known in the market at Bunds), its most-traded product. Eurex (the German futures exchange in Frankfurt) had the other 35% of the market. Throughout 1997, Eurex slowly grew its market share by slashing trading fees and extending access to its electronic platform to clients in the US and London. By contrast, LIFFE was slow to embrace technology, preferring to rely on the traditional, open outcry trading floor model. However, in January 1998, for the first time, Eurex captured a larger share of the Bund market than LIFFE. This marked a tipping point and by the end of 1998, virtually all Bund trading had shifted to Eurex (and stayed there). Coincidentally, the Streetwise Professor himself wrote a paper on the topic: http://www.bauer.uh.edu/spirrong/dtbtip2.pdf http://www.bauer.uh.edu/spirrong/dtbtip2.pdf