Half of the total volume at Chicago's futures exchanges is now traded electronically. With new records being set over the past month across a range of products, 55% of July's volume on Chicago Board of Trade came through the exchange's electronic trading system, ACE (which is due to be replaced by Liffe Connect at the end of the year), while Chicago Mercantile Exchange reached just short of half its total, with 49% trading through Globex.
The percentages have been growing steadily in the past couple of years. The percentage of total exchange volume traded through ACE at CBoT has climbed from 33% for the first half of 2002, to 50% for the first half of 2003, and 51% for January-July...