The Original Octagon

Long before Chuck Liddell stepped into the Octagon to help bring MMA to fame and certainly long before the "Octagon of Doom" there was the original Octagon.

The Chicago Board of Trade....

I say the Original Octagon because at the Board of Trade the trading pits are Octagon in shape to optimize sight lines.  When my folks were in Chicago before we moved we got to go on an all access tour of the Board of Trade, we actually got to go down onto the trading floor amidst the craziness that is the market place.  Nowadays it is a bit calmer than the picture above, technology has taken it's toll on the markets and a lot of the trading activitiy is all done electronically.  However, there are still some markets and commodities the kick it old school and use the traders, that's right the hand signals and shouting aren't just for good movie show, that's really how it's done.  It can best be described as organized chaos.

I was going to type up a rather lengthy dissertation on the process and "paint the picture" if you will.  But then I thought to myself: self, why not just let Mr. Dan Aykroyd explain the process.  Granted, this was in New York, but the general set up of the floor and the process holds true for Chicago.  And also granted that some of it may be "played up a bit" for the movie, but it honestly isn't that far off, as I mentioned computers have taken away some of the floor traders, but based on the volume with the few that were there I imagine this isn't far off from the BoT's hey-day. 

BTW the movie clip is from Trading Places and if you haven't seen it you should be ashamed of yourself.