Expanded Hours Unpopular

The expanded trading hours put into effect in May by CME Group in an effort to fend off a rival challenge from the Intercontinental Exchange seems to be backfiring. Interest in ICE’s grain contracts has been minimal to say the least, prompting more than six hundred traders, brokers, and farmers to recently sign a petition calling for CME to return to shorter hours, citing that twenty-one hour trading was just “too much”. Tim Andriesen, managing director of agricultural commodities for CME says, as with anything, there are pros and cons to having the longer hours, and that it’s too early yet to judge how expanded hours have impacted grain markets. Andriesen says that CME is continually monitoring and talking with its customers about the extended hours. In fact, CME is planning to formally survey users about the expanded trading hours in the very near future. Until the change in May, CBOT grains traded for seventeen hours a day, it’s now nonstop trading from 5 p.m. in the evening until 2 p.m. next day. Complaints about the extended hours aren’t just over long standing tradition, many of the markets worldly-wise participants say the expanded trading hours was a bad move.