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200 Caitlin Zaloomthe bids and offers available. Market reporters complained in the pages of theirdaily papers that traders in search of better sight lines were climbing onto theirdesks and obstructing the reporters’ vision. In 1869, the CBOT installed tradingpits to solve this problem. They introduced the eight-sided structure withthree steps (Faloon, 1998). This basic arrangement, which is still in use today,allows traders to see each other and to match a bid to the particular person whoshouted it. The structure integrates the market by making the information ofeach bid or offer available to all the participants.The tiered steps of the pit organize the physical space of open-outcry trading.Most importantly, the stepped structure creates a unified field of financialcompetition where traders can make deals with the full range of market participants.Each speculator can trade with any other. This physical ordering oftraders creates a market by drawing together the social network of traders in asingle location. Even those traders who work off-site have to execute theirtrades in the pit. They, too, are connected to the trading floor.In pit markets outside traders contact a clerk who “flashes” the order intothe pit with hand signals or sends a paper order slip to a broker in the pit. Ifthe trade must be executed right away, the outside speculator holds the phoneline until his order has been completed and confirmed by the clerk. The clerkquickly reports the quantity and price that has changed hands inside the pit.The CBOT uses the pit to define both the temporal and spatial dimensions oftrading. To be a legal trade, one recognized by the accountants of the CBOTand enforceable in a court, the exchange must occur within the confines of thepit and between the opening and closing bells of the trading day.Space in the PitPhysical and social space overlap in the pit. A pit market is a social networkof traders. The intricate structure of favors, debts, and friendship establishesbonds of reciprocity and obligations. The network, forged over time in the pits,provides access to resources and jobs, and provides trading tips and informaltraining. 8 Ties of family, friendship, and neighborhood assist neophyte tradersin acquiring entry-level positions, learning to interpret the market, finding anexchange member to sponsor admission to the CBOT, and often gaining thecapital necessary to begin trading. But it is not only important for distributingresources among individuals. These actors do not deal with each other solelyfor individual utility. Their bonds are at once social and economic.Connections extend beyond, but the pit remains the network’s spatial locus.Although the Chicago pit grounds its markets, the CBOT has always beenresolutely global. Futures markets have gathered information from around theworld since the telegraph brought weather reports and harvest predictionsfrom Russia, Argentina, and Europe to the trading floor (Morgan, 1979; Preda,