Coordinates: 40°42′52″N 74°1′1″W / 40.71444°N 74.01694°W / 40.71444; -74.01694

New York Mercantile Exchange

Type	Subsidiary of the CME Group
Founded	1882
Headquarters	New York, US
Website	www.cmegroup.com

The New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is a commodity futures exchange owned and operated by CME Group of Chicago. NYMEX is located at One North End Avenue in the World Financial Center in the Battery Park City section of Manhattan, New York City. Additional offices are located in Boston, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, San Francisco, Dubai, London, and Tokyo.

The company's two principal divisions are the New York Mercantile Exchange and Commodity Exchange, Inc (COMEX), once separately owned exchanges. NYMEX Holdings, Inc., the former parent company of the New York Mercantile Exchange and COMEX, became listed on the New York Stock Exchange on November 17, 2006, under the ticker symbol NMX. On March 17, 2008, Chicago based CME Group signed a definitive agreement to acquire NYMEX Holdings, Inc. for $11.2 billion in cash and stock and the takeover was completed in August 2008. Both NYMEX and COMEX now operate as designated contract markets (DCM) of the CME Group.^[1] The other two designated contract markets in the CME Group are the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade.

The New York Mercantile Exchange handles billions of dollars worth of energy products, metals, and other commodities being bought and sold on the trading floor and the overnight electronic trading computer systems for future delivery. The prices quoted for transactions on the exchange are the basis for prices that people pay for various commodities throughout the world.

The floor of the NYMEX is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an independent agency of the United States government. Each individual company that trades on the exchange must send its own independent brokers. Therefore, a few employees on the floor of the exchange represent a big corporation and the exchange employees only record the transactions and have nothing to do with the actual trade.

Although mostly electronic since 2006, the NYMEX maintains a small venue that still practices the open outcry trading system, in which traders employ shouting and complex hand gestures on the physical trading floor. A project to preserve the hand signals used at NYMEX has been published.^[2]

Early history[link]

Former Buildings

628 Broadway between Bleecker and Houston Streets, built in 1882 and designed by H.J. Schwarzmann^[3]

6 Harrison Street at Hudson Street, the exchange's headquarters from 1885-1977^[4]

Commodity exchanges began in the middle of the 19th century, when businessmen began organizing market forums to make buying and selling of commodities easier. These marketplaces provided a place for buyers and sellers to set the quality, standards, and establish rules of business. By the late 19th century about 1,600 marketplaces had sprung up at ports and railroad stations. In 1872, a group of Manhattan dairy merchants got together and created the Butter and Cheese Exchange of New York. Soon, egg trade became part of the business conducted on the exchange and the name was modified to the Butter, Cheese, and Egg Exchange. In 1882, the name finally changed to the New York Mercantile Exchange when opening trade to dried fruits, canned goods, and poultry.

As centralized warehouses were built into principal market centers such as New York and Chicago in the early 20th century, exchanges in smaller cities began to disappear giving more business to the exchanges such as the NYMEX in bigger cities. In 1933, the COMEX was established through the merger of four smaller exchanges; the National Metal Exchange, the Rubber Exchange of New York, the National Raw Silk Exchange, and the New York Hide Exchange. In the 1970s, COMEX, NYMEX, and other exchanges shared a single trading floor^[5] in 4 World Trade Center.

Potatoes[link]

For years, the NYMEX traders had done a large business trading futures of the Maine Potato crop. According to Leah McGrath Goodman's 2011 book The Asylum,^[5] manipulation in this market was commonplace, performed by various parties including potato inspectors and NYMEX traders. The worst incident was the 1970s potato bust, when Idaho potato magnate J. R. Simplot allegedly went short in huge numbers, leaving a large amount of contracts unsettled at the expiration date, resulting in a large number of defaulted delivery contracts. A public outcry followed, and the newly created Commodity Futures Trading Commission held hearings. NYMEX was barred from trading not only potatoes futures, but from entering new areas it hadn't traded in before. NYMEX's reputation was severely damaged, because, as future chairman Michel Marks told Goodman in her book, "The essence of an exchange is the sanctity of its contract".^[6]

Oil[link]

After the potato ban, NYMEX's existence was in doubt. Most of the trading volume had been in potatoes. Without a good commodity, the traders had trouble making money. Eventually the new chairman, Michel Marks (son of commodities icon Francis Q Marks)^[7], along with economist Arnold Safer, figured out that NYMEX could revamp an old heating oil futures contract. When the government deregulated heating oil, the contract had a chance of becoming a good object of trade on the floor. A new futures contract was carefully drawn up and trading began on a tiny scale in 1978. Some of the first users of NYMEX heating oil deliveries were small scale suppliers of people in the Northern United States.^[8]

NYMEX's business threatened some entrenched interests like big oil and government groups like OPEC that had traditionally controlled oil prices. NYMEX provided an 'open market' and thus transparent pricing for heating oil, and, eventually, crude oil, gasoline, and natural gas. NYMEX's oil futures contracts were standardized for the delivery of West Texas Intermediate light, sweet crude oil to Cushing, Oklahoma.^[9]

Growth[link]

The energy trading business took off, and NYMEX boomed. The open outcry floor became a cacophony of shouting traders and pit cards. The pits became a place where many people without much education or ability to fit in to Wall Street could have a chance at being rich. Many traders and executives became millionaires. They threw lavish parties and went on exotic vacations. Many of these people also became heavily involved in drugs and prostitution, with drugs being traded right on the floor of the exchange. Goodman's book tells the stories of many of the personalities that built the exchange in this era.^[5]

COMEX (Commodity Exchange, Inc), one of the exchanges that shared 4 World Trade Center with NYMEX, had traditionally looked down on NYMEX for being smaller and for having the toxic reputation from the potato bust. With NYMEX's energy trading boom, it became much larger and wealtheir than COMEX. On August 3, 1994, the NYMEX and COMEX finally merged under the NYMEX name. By the late 1990s, there were more people working on the NYMEX floor than there was space for them. In 1997, the NYMEX moved to a new building on the Southwestern portion of Manhattan, part of a complex called the World Financial Center.^{[5][10][11][12][13]}

9/11[link]

NYMEX maintained a close relationship with many organizations and people at World Trade Center, and several NYMEX people were lost in the tragedy, even though the NYMEX building itself was mostly undamaged. Despite the devastation, the exchange's management and staff had the exchange back up and running in very short order.^[5] After the attacks, the NYMEX built a $12 million trading floor backup facility outside of New York City with 700 traders' booths, 2,000 telephones, and a backup computer system. This backup was in case of another terrorist attack or natural disaster in Lower Manhattan.^[14]

On February 26, 2003, the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT) signed a lease agreement with the NYMEX to move into its World Financial Center headquarters and trading facility after the NYBOT's original headquarters and trading floor was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.^[15]

Electronic trading[link]

NYMEX held a virtual monopoly on 'open market' oil futures trading (as opposed to the dark market or 'over the counter' market). However in the early 2000s the electronically based exchanges started taking away the business of the open outcry markets like NYMEX. Enron's online energy trading system was part of this trend. Jeff Sprecher's IntercontinentalExchange, or ICE, was another example. ICE eventually began trading oil contracts that were extremely similar to NYMEX's, taking away market share almost immediately.^[5]

The open outcry NYMEX pit traders had always been against electronic trading because it threatened their income and their lifestyle. The executives at NYMEX felt that electronic trading was the only way to keep the exchange competitive. NYMEX teamed up with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to use Globex in 2006. The trading pits emptied out as many traders quit. Banks, hedge funds, and huge oil companies stopped making telephone calls to the pits and started trading directly for themselves over screens.^[5]

Sell off[link]

The final executive management of NYMEX decided to sell it off in pieces, take golden parachute buyouts, and leave. In 2006 NYMEX underwent an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The executives and exchange members owning seats on the exchange saw their net worth increase by millions of dollars in a few hours - many of the pit traders, who leased their seats instead of owning, did not.^[16] Other parts of NYMEX were sold to private equity investors and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The CME got ownership of the physical facilities and began scrubbing the NYMEX logo and name off of various artefacts and closed the NYMEX museum. NYMEX eventually became little more than a brand name used by CME.^[5] By 2011, NYMEX open outcry trading was relegated for the most part to a small number of people trading options.^[17]

Gold delivery problems[link]

In 2009 it was reported that holders of COMEX gold futures contracts experienced problems taking delivery of their metal. Along with chronic delivery delays, some investors received delivery of bars not matching their contract in serial number and weight. The delays could not be easily explained by slow warehouse movements, as the daily reports of these movements showed little activity. Because of these problems, there were concerns that COMEX did not have the gold inventory to back its existing warehouse receipts.^[18]

Trading platforms[link]

• Pit (open outcry)
• Electronic trading (Globex)

Commodities traded[link]

See also[link]

References[link]

Notes

Bibliography

• Goodman, Leah McGrath. The Asylum New York: Harper Collins, 2011

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: New York Mercantile Exchange

• New York Mercantile Exchange official website
• COMEX website
• TradingPitHistory.com A website to preserve the hand signal language of open outcry trading
• New York Mercantile Exchange collected news and commentary at The New York Times

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (October 2007)

Elizabeth Kate "Liz" Claman (born December 12, 1963) is the anchor of the Fox Business Network show Countdown to the Closing Bell at 3pm ET and co-anchor at 2pm ET and 4pm ET of Fox Business on the Fox Business Network alongside co-anchor David Asman. She was previously the co-anchor of the CNBC morning television program Morning Call. Before that, Claman was the co-host of the programs Wake Up Call and Market Watch and the anchor of the CNBC newsmagazine program Cover to Cover. Claman also served as a substitute anchor for The News with Brian Williams before Williams left MSNBC for NBC News in 2004.

Early years[link]

Claman was born to Canadian parents in Beverly Hills, California, United States. Her paternal grandparents are Russian Canadian.^[1] Her late^[1] father, Dr. Morris Claman, was a urologist and associate clinical professor of urology at the UCLA School of Medicine. Her mother is actress June Claman. For her early education, Claman went to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts where she was a disc jockey for the school radio station, WPAA, and to Beverly Hills High School. She has been friends with fellow Fox News reporter Claudia Cowan since the second grade.^[2]

After a brief stint at UC Santa Cruz, Claman transferred to UC Berkeley where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in French language. She also has a Certificat Supérieur de Français from the Sorbonne.

Career[link]

Claman got her start in television as a production assistant for Paula Zahn and Jim Lampley at Los Angeles television station KCBS-TV. Claman's first on-the-air reporting job was at WSYX-TV (Columbus, Ohio) followed by a stint hosting a morning talk show, Morning Exchange, at WEWS-TV (Cleveland). Later, Claman served as a weekend anchor at WHDH-TV (Boston).

While working in local television, Claman won several local Emmy Awards.

In April 1998, Claman began her CNBC career as a freelancer, based in Fort Lee, New Jersey and later in neighboring Englewood Cliffs.^[3] Six weeks into her 13-week trial period, CNBC gave Claman a long-term contract.^{[citation needed]}

In November 2006, Claman made her debut as an author with her book, The Best Investment Advice I Ever Received.^[4] On July 19, 2007, Claman announced her departure from CNBC effective immediately.^[5] Claman started at Fox Business Network on October 18, 2007, 3 days after the expiration of her no-compete contract clause with CNBC. She is appearing from 2-5 PM ET where for the latter two hours of the time slot she will compete against CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo. Her first Fox Business Network assignment was an interview with Warren Buffett. Claman first interviewed Buffett in November 2006 when she was at CNBC. Since she joined Fox Business she has conducted interviews with global political and business leaders such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mario Gabelli, Eric Schmidt, Steve Forbes, Sarah Palin, Jack Kemp, Robert Diamond, Richard Branson, Alan Mulally, Dennis Kozlowski, Tom J. Donohue, Ivanka Trump, and Robert James Thomson; Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Secretary of Treasury Lawrence Summers, Paul H. O'Neill, John W. Snow, and Timothy Geithner; former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker; former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich; S.E.C. Chairman Harvey Pitt and Mary Schapiro; London Mayor Boris Johnson; Israel's Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz; Israeli President Shimon Peres; and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. In addition to her daily three hours on Fox Business, she now appears regularly on CBS's The Early Show and has appeared on ABC's Good Morning America. She has been a guest on Fox News late-night satire show Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld, and also been interviewed by Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's The Daily Show.

Cable news show history[link]

Fox Business Network[link]

• Fox Business (Co-Anchor, 2007–present)
• Countdown to the Closing Bell (Anchor, 2008-05-12 – present)
• After the Bell (Co-Anchor, 2008-05-12 – present)

CNBC[link]

• Morning Call (co-anchor from 2002 to 2007)
• Cover to Cover (anchor from 2003 to 2006)
• Wake Up Call (co-anchor from 2002 to 2005)
• Market Watch (fill-in co-anchor from October, 1998 to March, 1999, co-anchor from March, 1999 to 2002)
• Today's Business (co-anchor from 2000 to 2002)
• This Morning's Business (regular fill-in anchor)
• Before the Bell (regular fill-in anchor)

Personal life[link]

Claman resides in Edgewater, New Jersey^[6] with her husband Jeff Kepnes, a senior producer for CNN, and their two children.^[7] Claman's oldest sister Danielle is an executive for Showtime, another older sister is a Hollywood studio musician, and her younger brother is also a musician.

Claman is a member of the charitable organization Hadassah and has been featured in an article in that organization's magazine. Claman is a Big Sister in the Big Brother/Big Sister program at the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services of Manhattan.

Claman is an active public speaker. She has given speeches and moderated discussions regarding women and mothers in the workplace.

Despite having been born with mild scoliosis,^{[citation needed]} Claman is an avid runner who completed the New York City Marathon in 2005^[8] and she completed her first Triathlon in New York City in July 2009, finishing the Nautica Olympic-distance Triathlon in under 3.5 hours.^[9] She is also a skier. In 2006 and 2007, Claman participated in the Jerry Ford Celebrity Cup Ski Race in Vail, Colorado sponsored by the Vail Valley Foundation charity. In 2007, Claman's ski team made the race finals.

In 1999, the author Matthew Klam, writing in The New York Times Magazine, referred to Claman as "the swimsuit model in a tight skirt and sweater set".^[10]

Quotes[link]

References[link]

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David Greenberg (born March 8, 1971 in New Haven, Connecticut) is a poet, songwriter and art critic.

Life[link]

Greenberg attended Rutgers University from 1989 to 1993. In December 1989, Greenberg met poet Allen Ginsberg in New York City. Greenberg published two chapbook collections of verse in 1991: Flesh and Astronomy. By 1994, Soft Skull Press published Feeling Gravity's Pull, the first "official" collection of poems by David Greenberg. That same year, Greenberg founded the NYC indie rock band Pen Pal along with poet and drummer Mario Mezzacappa. Pen Pal released one album Best Boy on Paradigm Records in 1996.^[1]

New York City Art World[link]

In addition to his poetic and musical projects, David Greenberg has collaborated on numerous catalogues with artist Donald Baechler including 1998's Crowd Paintings (published by Lars Bohman Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden) and 2002's 15 Paintings/15 Texts (published by Bernd Kluser Gallery, Munich, Germany). Greenberg's essays on artists Patti Smith and Donald Baechler have appeared in PARKETT ^[2] magazine; and his writings on photographer Ryan McGinley, poet Gregory Corso and actor Leo Fitzpatrick appeared in the FADER magazine.

In 1999, Greenberg teamed up with producer/composer David Siskovic (Sisko) and created the songwriting/production duo Disco Pusher.

David Greenberg is the co-author of Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith (published in 2002 by the Andy Warhol Museum) and writes for Art In America.*

Notes[link]

1. ^ Answers.com
2. ^ Pakettart.com

References[link]

• Penguin Group
• [1]

[2] [3] [4]

This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (June 2007)