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OPEN-OUTCRY trading is supposed to be a quaint, outdated practice, rapidly being replaced by sleeker, cheaper electronic systems

admin2014-09-18  31
问题      OPEN-OUTCRY trading is supposed to be a quaint, outdated practice, rapidly being replaced by sleeker, cheaper electronic systems. Try telling that to the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), the world’s largest commodities exchange. On November 1st the NYMEX opened an open-outcry pit in Dublin to handle Brent crude futures, the benchmark contract for pricing two-thirds of the world’s oil.
     The NYMEX is trying to snatch liquidity from London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), which trades the most Brent contracts; the New York Exchange has hitherto concentrated on West Texas Intermediate, an American benchmark grade. The new pit is a response to the IPE’s efforts to modernise. On the same day as NYMEX traders started shouting Brent prices in Dublin, the IPE did away with its morning open-outcry session: now such trades must be electronic, or done in the pit after lunch.
     The New York Exchange claims that customers, such as hedge funds or energy companies, prefer open-outcry because it allows for more liquidity. Although most other exchanges are heading in the opposite direction, in commodity markets such as the NYMEX, pressure from "locals" — self-employed traders — is helping to prop up open-outcry, although some reckon that customers pay up to five times as much as with electronic systems. Even the IPE has no plans to abolish its floor. Only last month it signed a lease, lasting until 2011, for its trading floor in London.
      Dublin’s new pit is "showing promise", says Rob Laughlin, a trader with Man’ Financial, despite a few technical glitches. On its first day it handled 5, 726 lots of Brent ( each lot, or contract, is 1,000 barrels), over a third of the volume in the IPE’s new morning electronic session. By the year’s end, predicts Mr. Laughlin, it should be clear whether the venture will be viable. It would stand a better chance if it moved to London. It may yet: it started in Ireland because regulatory approval could be obtained faster there than in Britain.
     Ultimately, having both exchanges offering similar contracts will be unsustainable. Stealing liquidity from an established market leader, as the NYMEX is trying to do, is a hard task. Eurex, Europe’s largest futures exchange, set up shop in Chicago this year, intending to grab American Treasury-bond contracts from the Chicago Board of Trade. It has made little headway. And the NYMEX has dabbled in Brent contracts before, without success.
     Given the importance of liquidity in exchanges, why do the IPE and the NYMEX not band together? There have been merger talks before, and something might yet happen. Some say that the freewheeling NYMEX and the more staid IPE could never mix. For now, in any case, the two exchanges will slug it out — across the Irish Sea as well as across the Atlantic.  
From the last paragraph, we can predict that ______.
选项 A、the incorporation of the two energy exchanges are bound to happen
B、the NYMEX and the IPE are now negotiating for a compromise
C、the likelihood of the merger of the NYMEX and the IPE is quite slim
D、the two exchanges will give up competing because of the distance in space TEXT C
答案C
解析 推断题。根据文章最后两段，两家能源交易所因为交易内容相似，且两家都是著名交易所，这种市场局面最终将难以维系。作者提出了两家能否联手的问题，但有人认为两个交易所一静一动，很难合并，可见C正确。
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