Untitled - socium.ge

206 Caitlin Zaloomadvantage of the hours when the greatest number of traders is operating in themarket – the hours of maximum liquidity.Electronic technologies and a commitment to 24-hour markets make tradepossible at all hours of the day. However, the social density needed for a liquidmarket restricts the best hours of operation. The temporality of this globalmarket is linked with time zones. The unity of the marketplace is created notthrough the technology, but in the working schedules when Chicago, London,and Frankfurt traders are all at their desks.In the markets that the London office of LDF specialized in – the Germanbond futures – the most active hours were between 1.00 and 4.00 p.m. MostLDF traders arrived at their desks before 7.00 a.m. when the German tradersentered the trading arena. Between 7.00 a.m. and 1.00 p.m., British andGerman traders constituted the bulk of the market. After 1.00 p.m. Londontime, traders in Chicago began to enter the market as their work hourscommenced. The heaviest volume occurred between 1.00 p.m. and 4.00 p.m.when Chicago, London, and Frankfurt were all in the mix. At 4.00 p.m.London time, the German traders would mostly have withdrawn from themarket for the day, leaving less business and diminished profitability for theLondon and Chicago traders.As in the trading pits, futures exchanges design the spatial and temporalarrangement of the market, shaping the information available to traders. Thedesigners of the a/c/e embedded key features of economic rationality on theformal design of the market. First, they created greater speed and directcontact between traders. The goal of distributing trading screens to dealingrooms around the world was to make the market available to the greatestnumber of participants. Creating an electronic market removes the CBOTnexus, which is now seen as an unnecessary middle agent. The designers ofthe market system sought to construct a trading field that would approximateperfect competition. 14Where the pit forged a central space for the social networks of traders toconvene and a focal point for information gathering and processing, the networkform of electronic trading forces traders to use new sources of information. Inthe LDF dealing room, traders garnered information from three key sources.First, the bid and offer numbers on the screen hold their primary focus. Becausethese traders can make use of each fluctuation in the market to make a profit,they constantly scrutinize their screens for profit opportunities. Second, thediscussions among traders over the course of the day identify patterns andreasons for each movement of the market. These constantly changing explanationsorient the traders within the flux of prices. Third, each trader keeps astream of information at his desk. The screens of a CQG machine show chartsthat track the historical movement of the market over the course of the pastweek, day, or ten-minute period, set to the personal preference of the user.