Before the CME went public in 2002, there was a change in leadership at the top. Terry Duffy ran for the job of chairman of the board against the incumbent, Scott Gordon. I was a fan of Gordon’s and then CME CEO Jim McNulty. McNulty was one of the reasons I started the John Lothian Newsletter. He had helped me find a job when I first graduated from Purdue University. He was for a short time one of my mentors. But then I started my career and he started traveling the world as an investment banker and I lost track of him.
This is the story of open outcry trading, electronic trading and an imaginary secret organization I created to tell the story of both. This...