Futures industry professionals at their annual bash in London last month were asked to debate the motion "futures exchanges have enjoyed their last good years". This wasn't about open outcry, since they'd condemned that roundly the year before, voting with hand-held electronic devices. Now the issue was whether exchanges, even automated ones, will thrive in any form. In the pre-debate vote, 58% of those present said they won't. But by the end, as in all good debates, some of them had changed their mind: 52% now saw a rosy future for exchanges. What had altered their view? Was it the powerful argument that futures and derivatives volumes have always increased year-on-year since the early 1980s? Was it the conclusion that almost any trading place, even the internet, qualifies as an exchange? Or was it another factor which could be called "the passion of Pat Catania"? Dawn of the cybertrader Catania,...
