We have a Joan Rivers Day for Today’s Morning Chalkboard. Joan always stepped in and hosted “The Tonight Show” when Johnny Carson needed a night off.
It is the Best of November 29th this morning. I got up, looked at the Chalkboard hanging in the kitchen and I just didn’t have the heart to put Mr. Jive Turkey away until next year.
I woke up at 3:30 on a day when the grain markets don’t open until 8:30 this morning.
Most weeknights the market is open overnight and I’m on call if someone needs to sell a couple thousand December Corn contracts or buy a thousand November Beans.
I long for the day when the bond pit opened at 7:20am and the bean pit opened at 9:30am.
I can still remember my first opening bell way back when Ronald Reagan was President.
I had a grey trading jacket with yellow piping for Index Trading. My cousin Chucky got me the job. We walked onto the grain floor and sitting at the door was a guard who was easily ninety years old. It was Mr. Mansfield and he knew it was my first day. He welcomed me to the Chicago Board of Trade and wished me luck.
I walked through the door and onto the brightly lit trading floor with quote boards lining the walls.
The head runner took me around and introduced me to the brokers standing in each pit. The corn pit, the bean pit, the wheat pit, the meal pit, the soybean oil pit and each of the pits had several brokers that I needed to remember.
I was intimidated and as I nervously settled in….
…the opening bell went off and the room erupted with loud screaming voices and flailing arms swinging back and forth.
All of those pits are long gone. So are the brokers and the runners and the market reporters.
It was the best job for a twenty-year-old boy. I’m thankful that I’m still in the same industry almost forty years later. Instead of getting on the Lake Street and heading into the loop, I’ll be climbing into Betty the Green Blazer and driving out to OakBrook.
But low and sell high baby!
Enjoy the day after Thanksgiving and find something astonishing to be thankful for
