Welcome back. Enjoy this latest article and then scroll down and please leave your comments/reactions at the bottom of this post. Thanks for visiting again!

An important part of stock market research, whether you’re day trading Dow futures or you’re buying stocks, is to have at least a rudimentary understanding of how transactions are done at the stock market exchanges.

In the first 3 parts of this series of articles on floor traders we looked at the futures and commodities markets. In today’s video you get a tour of the New York Stock Exchange.

Enjoy and please post your comments below.

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Today’s lesson: What we can learn from Floor Traders about psychology when emini day trading, as well as the Dow futures and commodities trading. Who makes better traders on the floor  – people with brains or brawn? Is it better to be a scholar or an athlete?

Also addressed: What is the future of pit trading. Are all the seat owners going to get killed or make a killing?

In this video 3 NYMEX pit traders are interviewed to help answer these questions:

1. Fredo is a seat owner who has been trading for 20 years.
2. John is a floor trader who executes trades for his employer as well as his own account.
3. Paul is a clerk who has only been at the exchange for 9 months.

This is part 3 of our 5-part series.

Enjoy the video, then please click on the “Comments” link at the very bottom of this section to leave your comments.

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Many of my readers have shown special interest in the behavior of floor traders. To people doing stock, Forex, dow futures or emini day trading, floor traders have a mystique and they want a peak behind the curtain.

I’ve never been a floor trader, but I’ve been trained by floor traders that took me right down into the pits of the CME so I could experience it up close and personal during market hours. I’ve visited the New York Stock Exchange, the Chicago futures exchanges  several times, but to me there was something special about the Chicago markets. The energy is very different than New York and I loved it.

I’ve also been to the Tokyo Stock Exchange, but that is now completely electronic and is as silent as the Chicago pits are loud. The energy of the TSE is just like walking into a library! Click here to read more about my trip to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Most screen traders (those who trade from computers) assume that floor traders have some special edge that screen traders don’t. There is, or was, some truth to that. But actually most floor traders are not successful. In addition, the open outcry system of the floor is giving way to electronic trading and the “floors” around the country, and the world, are shrinking and even disappearing.

While that transition represents progress, the nostolgic part of me mourns that loss. The floor has a unique and exciting quality that I hate to see disappear.

So if the pits are on the way out, what’s the point of learning about them?

It’s important because screen trading gives you the impression that the markets move based on the lines and squiggles of indicators. But when you stand on the floor of an exchange you see, hear, smell and feel that what really moves the market is people. You can hear their energy, you can see the greed on their faces and you can almost smell their fear.

That’s the REAL market, and that’s what makes the market really move.

Today I share with you the first video of this series on floor trading. It is actually a preview to a new movie that is coming out which looks very interesting.

Please post your comments and questions below about the video and about floor trading.

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