Paper-and-Pencil Era Is Ending: Within days, some...

Paper-and-Pencil Era Is Ending: Within days, some of the 6,000 brokers and traders at the world’s largest futures exchange will begin learning how to use electronic trading cards. The unusual joint effort by the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange will involve testing of a hand-held computer. The testing will occur during practice sessions in a mock trading arena installed one story above the trading floor. The industry hopes for monetary savings when it ends the century-old practice of tracking purchases and sales of futures contracts with pencils and paper cards. The new system is also supposed to be tamper-proof. Advocates say the gadgets will make trading more efficient by matching prices and quantities for trades as they happen.