Screens are the only option for former open outcry traders

Where is an open outcry trader to go? Nymex Europe is closing its open outcry trading floor, the New York Stock Exchange may yet do the same.

Peter Wherle, general manager at Nymex Europe, the European arm of oil and energy market New York Mercantile Exchange, says there are now only seven traders left on the market's open outcry trading floor, down from around 80 a few months ago.

On June 9th the floor will close altogether, to be replaced by electronic trading systems.

Nymex only opened in London in September last year, so its closure isn't exactly the end of a grand tradition.

Wherle says there have been some redundancies involved: "Some of the client companies laid guys off."

But many of the exchange's 80 open outcry traders are apparently now happily ensconced in front of electronic screens. "Most are trading the screens," says Wherle. "Some are working for arcades, others are working for their respective trading companies."

Alfie Noakes, managing director of Mark2Market, a company that helps redundant traders find new jobs, says this is the usual way of things. "A lot of the guys who left the Liffe floor in 2000 are now independents trading their own accounts."

NYSE traders may soon need to go down the same route. The Times recently reported John Thain, chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange, as hinting that the NYSE might go fully electronic if the merger with Euronext goes ahead.