Growth
The energy trading business took off, and NYMEX boomed. The open outcry floor became a cacophony of shouting traders and pit cards. The pits became a place where many people without much education or ability to fit in to Wall Street could have a chance at being rich. Many traders and executives became millionaires. They threw lavish parties and went on exotic vacations. Many of these people also became heavily involved in drugs and prostitution, with drugs being traded right on the floor of the exchange. Goodman's book tells the stories of many of the personalities that built the exchange in this era.
COMEX (Commodity Exchange, Inc), one of the exchanges that shared 4 World Trade Center with NYMEX, had traditionally looked down on NYMEX for being smaller and for having the toxic reputation from the potato bust. With NYMEX's energy trading boom, it became much larger and wealtheir than COMEX. On August 3, 1994, the NYMEX and COMEX finally merged under the NYMEX name. By the late 1990s, there were more people working on the NYMEX floor than there was space for them. In 1997, the NYMEX moved to a new building on the Southwestern portion of Manhattan, part of a complex called the World Financial Center.
Read more about this topic: New York Mercantile Exchange
Famous quotes containing the word growth:
“Corporate America will likely be motivated to support child care when it can be shown to have positive effects on that which management is concerned about—recruitment, retention and productivity. Indeed, employers relate to child care as a way to provide growth fostering environments for young managers.”
—Dana E. Friedman (20th century)
“That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze
Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume
Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze
Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;
An epitaph of glory for the tomb
Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,
Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;
Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;
The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. What possesses interest for us is the natural of each, his constitutional excellence. This is forever a surprise, engaging and lovely; we cannot be satiated with knowing it, and about it; and it is this which the conversation with Nature cherishes and guards.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)