New York Mercantile Exchange - Growth

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.