Continued: A closing bell for the trading pit

The opening bell of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange rang for the last time Friday, setting off the usual frantic volley of bids, but before long someone was playing Frank Sinatra's "My Way," while an old dog waddled around the trading room floor.

"It's an Irish wake!" one trader yelled.

The trading pit of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange is usually a place for steel nerves and calculated decisions, not sentimentality. But incongruous sights and sounds were part of the scene Friday, even before the day began, as traders, runners and clerks traded hugs and high-fives.

By the time the final bell rang at precisely 1:15, the trading pit looked like a barroom brawl. Traders pushed and shoved, their faces contorted as they tried to out-scream each other for the final deal to go down, at least at this decibel, in this room.

They threw signs like baseball catchers: Hands out means I'm selling. Hands in, I'm buying. Then, just like that, this archaic, obscure form of futures trading, called "open outcry," was over. Some traders were ahead of the bell, already drinking beer at the back.

The big board glowed above: Minneapolis spring wheat was down nine cents. Perhaps another fortune was won. Or lost.

There will be no more gesticulating on Monday.

'Word is your bond'

Blame technology. Blame the need for efficiency. Blame our collective boredom with tradition. Or, as some traders did privately, blame the non-profit's board for the demise of this 127-year-old tradition.

Only a handful of open outcry traders remained at the end. Most have already gone to online trading, which can be done from India or your grandmother's basement.

Others -- the Grain Exchange said it didn't know how many (one trader guessed 40 people) -- will be left unemployed.

Rita Maloney, director of marketing for the Grain Exchange, said no decision has been made on what will happen to the trading floor, a sprawling space a block wide, filled with natural light from soaring windows so early traders could study the grain on long tables.

Once teeming with traders and farmers and food company executives, it's now a mostly empty cubicle farm with a brass-railed catwalk and wedding cake crown molding.

"I hope they don't make it a roller dome," said Ron McDaniel, who watched the chaos from the visitor's balcony. Once a cash grain merchant on the floor, McDaniel now works as an electronic trader.

"When I came here in the 1970s, those tables were filled with pan samples from each train car," he said. "Traders touched it, and smelled it and sniffed it.

"It's a little piece of you that's gone."

It was, he said, capitalism at its purest form, trading the food of the world, face-to-face. "You live by your wits. You eat what you kill. Your word is your bond. Those were the axioms on the floor.

"It's the nuances that get lost," said McDaniel. "On the floor you know who people are and you guess why they are buying or selling, you can actually feel where the world grain market is going, it's physical, and it's in the gut. How can I get that from a computer screen?"

Reporters were kept off the floor Friday because it was "a very emotional day'' for traders, said the Exchange's Maloney. Down below, you could hear the machines that punch trade tickets click rhythmically, the end literally ticking away.

"I brought my sunglasses, just in case," said one trader.

"And I brought extra mascara," said a clerk.

Group hug

From the visitors' balcony, Randy Penrod watched the chaos with sadness. He had been to an ancient castle halfway across the world, but never seen the Exchange, a locus of the world's grain trade.

"I'm a history buff and a romantic," said Penrod. "The Grain Exchange was founded when my grandfather was 1 year old. This was my opportunity to see the end of an era."

Exchange tour guide Ray Erickson watched nearby. A former farm boy, now retired, Erickson applied for his job about nine years ago because he was intrigued by the action. "Met a lot of nice people," he said.

Erickson's not sure whether he will still have a job, now that the main attraction -- the frantic, ritualistic antics of the traders -- is gone.

"I guess I'd have to change the tour," he said. "It would have to be more than just looking at computer screens."

Jon Tevlin • 612-673-1702