Trader’s Tribute Deemed ‘Too Sad’ for NYBOT Pit

As the New York Board of Trade got ready for business Monday at its emergency headquarters in Queens, Tony DeMarco carried something other than financial data: He brought a violin.

DeMarco, an accomplished fiddler, planned to recognize victims of last week’s tragedy with a performance of “Amazing Grace” before commodities trading at the NYBOT reopened.

But market officials worried that it would be “too sad,” he said.

The NYBOT, trading cocoa, coffee, sugar, cotton and orange juice at 4 World Trade Center, was the market floor closest to the destroyed twin towers. All hands escaped alive, but none escaped the trauma.

Still, the fiddler’s trip to the backup commodities pit in Long Island City on Monday wasn’t wasted. DeMarco--”I know the name might throw you for an Irish fiddle player but my mother is Dempsey”--may perform music by night, but he trades commodities by day.

He took the whole thing philosophically: “I wanted to do it, but a couple of people said no,” he recalled outside the building where a raucous market in cocoa futures roared indoors. “So I’ll trade coffee.”