If the CME Group were to hold a funeral for open-outcry trading, Margery Teller should deliver its eulogy. A legendary trader, she earned the nickname “Large Marge” for taking enormous positions in the eurodollar pit in the early 2000s. Her remarks below are adapted from emails and phone interviews with Tribune business columnist Melissa Harris after CME announced Wednesday it would close most of its futures trading pits in Chicago and New York.
I still remember my first moment on the floor.
I started as a clerk for O’Connor & Associates. The noise and the colors were overwhelming.
People were screaming in a language I couldn’t comprehend.
There was palpable fear and adrenaline in the air.
I fell instantly in love.
If you had the guts and the instinct then it didn’t matter if you were a skinny, 23-year old girl.
People would trade with you if they could see or hear you.
At its peak, there were hundreds of people in the eurodollar pit.
Because I was so much shorter than most, I had to develop a voice that people could hear. So I took voice lessons to learn how to scream. And in time, they could literally hear me from one end of the pit to the other, which was probably about 100 yards. It was a long distance.
It was a unique pit that combined option theory with futures, although while we were down there all we thought about was executing trades, not bell curves or standard deviations.
The experience of being down there for a big-number day, a Fed announcement or unemployment number still lives with me.
There was stillness as everyone waited for the news.
You only would hear your beating heart, the pop of chewing gum or the tap of a nervous foot.
Seconds later, pandemonium would erupt as the markets exploded on the news, and all you could think about for the next few minutes was spitting out price quotes and staying ahead of the risk.
When it was good, it was the best in the world. Nothing to match it. The highs. The camaraderie. The battle.
And then there were the lows.
It was like a bad relationship.
The ’87 crash. I had just bought a house the month before. I thought it was the end of the world.
Of course, the markets came back like they always do.
But 2001 was a different animal because we were just trying to shut down the floor. We were afraid they were going to hit the Sears Tower. We were just trying to get everybody out of there.
There were three of us who had to stay behind and shut down the floor. We just had to put up some prices so the markets would settle because we didn’t know when the markets would reopen.
We started walking home through the Loop. It was the most awful feeling to know that we knew people in the (World Trade Center). There were people on the floor talking to people at Cantor Fitzgerald when the plane struck.
Then the music stopped. Just trying to get out of positions, it was a nightmare.
9/11 was kind of a turning point for me. I really didn’t want to trade after that point. That’s when I decided I really wanted to get out. It was the first time I left the pit. Because it just did not seem it was worth all of the risk and all of the stress and everything to be down there when it could all be gone in a moment.
You feel current events. I was there when the Challenger went down. There were all sorts of crazy financial things and world events that affected us.
If you had had a losing day, you wanted to get back in there and defend your position, make your money back. Trying to make your money back was always the worst part of the whole game.
I have lost millions in one day.
We were levered up to the max. You can get a huge amount of bang for not that much margin.
As an individual, I often had as big of a position in that pit as any major bank in the world, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of open contracts.
I don’t think I could handle it now. You have to build yourself up to it — and not actually ever think about how much money is involved.
It was like heroin. That was the addiction of it.
I retired four times. I didn’t leave for good until 2010.
Outsiders thought that traders were slimy, and some were.
But in my experience, they were the most honorable people in the world. Every deal was a handshake agreement. The only enforcement was your word and your reputation.
The generosity was legendary. When my daughter was diagnosed with diabetes, the money that poured out, even from my staunchest competitors, was overwhelming.
I loved it. I miss it. And I’m sorry my daughter will never experience it.
Twitter @chiconfidential
