In the late 1960s, there were two rogue candidates who ran for the role of chairman of Chicago's leading futures exchanges. One was Leo Melamed, head of the "Young Turks" at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the other was William Mallers, Sr. the youngest man ever elected chairman of the Chicago Board of Trade. This infusion of young blood into these stodgy organizations would transform Chicago's financial markets and change the course of its place in the global financial markets. Melamed would lead the creation of the International Monetary Market, a separate exchange that would later be rolled back into the CME. Melamed's accomplishments during his career are legendary.  Mallers would lead the committee at the CBOT that led to the creation of the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Both Mallers and Melamed would play a part in the creation of the National Futures Association, with Mallers finding CBOT President Robert Wilmouth a new job as NFA president.  Melamed's story is well known via the multiple books he has written about his experiences and his long tenure on the board of the CME, which only ended a few years ago. Mallers would step aside after one term as CBOT chairman and slate the man he had run against as a rogue candidate as chairman to replace him. Mallers would wield power behind the scenes at the CBOT for the next fifteen years without any official title. OK, maybe he was the unofficial godfather of CBOT politics at the time.  Melamed would serve multiple terms as chairman of the CME before finally stepping aside for his protege Jack Sandner, though Melamed still wielded power from the CME executive committee he chaired for many years.   Joe Sullivan talks about Mallers in his paper about his career and the beginning of the CBOE, noting it was Mallers who resurfaced after leaving the limelight of the chairman's position to weigh in on the question of which members of the CBOT should be able to trade on the CBOE. Mallers said that "the purpose of the undertaking had been to provide trading opportunities for all members whether or not they chose to use them at any given time." Sullivan noted that giving CBOT members this perpetual right would bite CBOE in the butt later.  The story I was told by Mallers, whom I worked for in the 1980s at First American Discount, was that Eddie O'Connor had proposed creating an exchange to trade stock options at a dinner and outlined the plans on a cocktail napkin. Mallers took that idea as chairman and drove it to reality, along with O'Connor, Paul Maguire and several other key players at the CBOT. The first board of directors of the CBOE did not have Mallers on it, but it did have Pat Hennessy, from Hennessy & Associates, the firm that Mallers was the president of when he was chairman. You can see how Mallers worked, having key allies in positions of power at the CBOT and also at the CBOT Clearing Corporation. I met Mallers after he had fallen out of favor at the CBOT, and Tom Donovan as a strong CBOT president had changed the power dynamics of the exchange.  As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the CBOE, now Cboe Global Markets, I wanted to remember William Mallers, Sr., a man largely forgotten to history. Mallers died in 2006 at the age of 77. He had been gone from the industry since 2000 when First American was sold to ED&F Man, In

The Small Exchange announced plans to launch its first options contract on Small Precious Metals Product (SPRE) index futures on January 25, 2022. I interviewed Small Exchange CEO Donnie Roberts about the new product, Small Exchange’s plans for future options contracts, and the impending deal for the exchange to be acquired by Crypto.com.    The SPRE index is made up of gold, silver and platinum prices, with the largest weighting on gold, then silver, Roberts said. The new options contracts will be cleared at the OCC, same as The Small Exchange’s futures contracts.   Roberts said they have two market makers in place for the new options contracts, and the exchange and OCC have done six months of testing to prepare for the launch.   Here is my interview with Donnie Roberts of the Small Exchange.

I wrote this column in 2012 for the John Lothian Newsletter after the death of my friend and Assistant Scoutmaster Bill Griswold. Reflecting on his life of giving, I reflected on all the giving of the readership of the John Lothian Newsletter over the years.  Here is the commentary from 2012. ~John Lothian

When my son Tim was ten, he came home from school one day and told us at the dinner table about his day touring the middle school with his grade school class. After he finished explaining about Bryan Middle School in Elmhurst, which he would be attending next year, I told him it was a waste of his time. I told him his mother and I had decided to send him to Hogwarts, the school Harry Potter attended. He smiled and said, “Right, Dad.” This is the story of how some other parents and i pranked out sons into thinking they were going to Hogwarts.

The number of cases of coronavirus doubled in the US. in two day. And worldwide cases doubled in the last twelve days, from 100,000 to 200,000. In the US, they are spiking and in New York City alone there are now 4000 cases. The number of unemployment claims is growing even faster c, though the White House does not want states to reveal their numbers. And the calls for Sen. Richard Burr from North Carolina to resign are growing even more. He might be the least popular Burr since his relative Aaron, who as we know had a run in with treason himself. Major hospitals are reported to be running short of supplies]], medical professionals are starting to improvise and more car companies are saying, “Heck yes, we can make ventilators.” That great big sucking sound you hear should be new ventilators being made, but it is instead the sound of a cratering economy.  In California, the Governor said normal unemployment claims are 2000 a day; then three days ago there were 40,000 and the next day 80,000. I have two offspring whose jobs are on hold as their schools closed. I have another son coming home from college as it moved online and he is being kicked out of the dorms. And how bad is it in California? The Governor says he expects half of the state to get the virus in the next eight weeks. And he is shutting down the state and telling everyone to stay at home.  Cboe Global Markets, Inc. launched a webpage with their business continuity plans amid the developing novel coronavirus (COVID-19) situation. It is a popular thing to do, as everything right now is centered around flattening the curve and surviving the impact of the virus. The CTAExpo/Emerging Manager Forum New York to be held on April 22-23, 2020 at the Stewart Hotel has been cancelled. Many hotels across the country are closing, which is impacting events (duh!) and even necessary travel for those trying to get back home (Hi Mom!). Even the G7 meeting scheduled for April was cancelled when Camp David put out the “Closed for the Virus” sign. Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is accused of telling a gathering of big wig business leaders from North Carolina the dire predictions about the impact of the virus and selling $1.7 million in stock while downplaying the virus to the public. ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom broke the story. The sales of stock came on February 13, at a time when he was receiving briefings on the virus. Monday would be a good time for him to resign. I leave you with a quote from Ronald Reagan, courtesy of OCC’s David Prosperi: “No crisis is beyond the capacity of our people to solve, no challenge too great.”

This is the story of open outcry trading, electronic trading and an imaginary secret organization I created to tell the story of both. This was the first time I used SPET, or the Society for the Promotion of Electronic Trading, to tell a story.

Before the CME went public in 2002, there was a change in leadership at the top. Terry Duffy ran for the job of chairman of the board against the incumbent, Scott Gordon. I was a fan of Gordon’s and then CME  CEO Jim McNulty. McNulty was one of the reasons I started the John Lothian Newsletter. He had helped me find a job when I first graduated from Purdue University. He was for a short time one of my mentors. But then I started my career and he started traveling the world as an investment banker and I lost track of him.