The jostling and shouting of the last 15 minutes of daily trade at the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange has the same intensity as it has for generations.
But now, traders are buying and selling commodity futures in a less cavernous, more modern space.
The finishing touches are being put on a year-long, $1.2 million renovation of the exchange’s trading floor and administrative offices.
It has consolidated the space it uses in a downtown Winnipeg office building by a third, which has helped it keep overhead costs from increasing.
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“It’s a much more efficient layout than we had in the past,” said Bruce Love, director of marketing for the exchange.
The exchange sought help from a Chicago-based architectural firm that specializes in trading floor design.
Its lease was up for renewal in June, so the firm surveyed suitable accommodations in the city.
From a short list of three options, members voted to stay in the Commodity Exchange Tower for its convenience, said Love.
The exchange has been in the same building since 1980.
The firm calculated how much space the exchange needed based on its volume, number of traders, and hopes for future growth. Then it went to work.
In a year when canola trades set several records, the smaller space makes the atmosphere of the trading floor seem even busier.
The pits have a new look: the higher-volume oilseeds pit is longer and larger while the nearby feed grains pit is a smaller hexagon shape. Both have fewer steps.
Price boards showing current trades line two walls instead of one, making them easier to see from the floor.
Underneath the boards, new cubicles for trading firms provide convenient space for receiving orders from clients.
A bank of terminals showing options trades separates the floor from the traders’ lounge, which is replete with its own smoking room.
High overhead, two sepia-toned oldtime harvest photographs remind visitors what the action is all about.
The observation lounge is at the foot of the trading floor, and is not as high overhead as it used to be.
The exchange also updated the technology on the trading floor.
For more than a year, it has been studying the possibilities of extending trading hours or trading new types of contracts through electronic trading.
This would not change the open outcry trading used for the exchange’s current roster of contracts, said Love.
“That question hasn’t been raised.”
But if the exchange diversifies into non-agricultural products, such as lumber, electronic trading of futures contracts may be considered, he said.
