Out of the pits : traders and technology from Chicago to London

From New York to Singapore, from Chicago to London, the trading floors of the world’s financial markets are icons of global capitalism. Images of them are used on the news all the time—traders burying their heads in their hands when the market is down, their arms flailing in a frenzy when fortunes are rising—to convey the current state of the economy. But these marketplaces, and the cultural life that sustains them, are dissolving into the ether of the digital age: powerful financial institutions are shutting down the trading pits, replacing face-to-face exchanges with an electronic network where traders sit, face to screen, finger to mouse, and compete in a global arena made up of digits and charts. __Out of the Pits__ considers the implications of this sea change for everyone involved, from the traders and brokers to the market as a whole. Caitlin Zaloom takes us down to the floor at the Chicago Board of Trade and into a digital dealing room in the City of London. Drawing on her own firsthand experiences as a clerk and a trader and on her unusual access to these key sites of global finance, she explainshow changes at the world’s leading financial exchanges have transformed economic cultures and the craft of speculation; how people and places are responding to the digital transition; how traders are remaking themselves to compete in the contemporary marketplace; and how brokers, business managers, and software designers are collaborating to build new financial markets. A penetrating and richly detailed account of how cities, culture, and technology shape everyday life in the new global economy, __Out of the Pits__ will be must reading for business buffs or anyone who has ever wondered how financial markets work.

 

In Out of the Pits, Caitlin Zaloom shows how traders, brokers, and global financial markets have adapted to the digital age. Drawing on her firsthand experiences as a clerk and a trader, as well as on her unusual access to key sites of global finance, she explains how changes at the world’s leading financial exchanges have transformed economic cultures and the craft of speculation; how people and places are responding to the digital transition; how traders are remaking themselves to compete in the contemporary marketplace; and how brokers, business managers, and software designers are collaborating to build new markets. A penetrating and richly detailed account of how cities, culture, and technology shape everyday life in the global economy, Out of the Pits will be required reading for anyone who has ever wondered how financial markets work.

“Zaloom’s superb book is a double-site ethnography [that shows how] the appearance of chaos hid a complex social order, which Zaloom delineates beautifully.”—The London Review of Books

Theory and Society

"Zaloom''s account of the social world of the pits . . . demonstrates interpretive skills reminiscent of classics of cultural and economic anthropology. In this book, she has provided an empirically rich and theroretically sophisticated ethnographic account."-Theory and Society

Shows how traders, brokers, and global financial markets have adapted to the digital age. The author explains how changes at the world's leading financial exchanges have transformed economic cultures and the craft of speculation, and how people and places are responding to the digital transition.