In an era where computer algorithms automate trading at breakneck speeds, a dwindling number of London's metal traders still conduct business in-person by shouting orders across Europe's last so-called open-outcry trading floor. The nearly 150-year-old tradition takes place in a circle, or pit, of red-leather benches, called the 'Ring', where the daily global prices of copper, nickel, aluminium and other metals are set at the London Metal Exchange (LME). "All the shouting and screaming that we do here is used by the whole world," says Giles Plumb, a veteran financial services trader.
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00:00I've traded tin zinc
00:30aluminum and now I'm on to copper for 20-21 years. So the market was entirely open
00:35outcry. So this would be, this pit would be full of 22 brokers, 300 people, huge wall
00:43of noise so you could barely hear yourself think. After six months being down here I
00:49worked, I eventually got an idea of what was going on. Still very noisy and then
00:55by the end of it by now I can tell people's voices. I know who's doing what
00:59even without looking at them.
01:06It was open outcry for the first six years of my career and then it went to screen trading as well as open outcry.
01:21So you're trading online on a computer as well as trading down here. And we used to trade two sessions in the morning, two in the afternoon plus a PM session. But as of now, since COVID, it's been reduced to one official session during the day.
02:06This is antiquated. This is a very old fashioned way of trading. But it still works. It still
02:13works very well. It won't be here forever. It will be replaced with the online trading system.
02:20But we found out that this is a very, it keeps the regulators happy. It's very physical. You can see how much you've traded.
02:27You can see, you can hear how much people are doing, what they're doing. Everything's recorded. Online has taken over the rest of the world.
02:35This won't stay here forever. But for the moment, we're still here.
02:39This is an aluminum alloy.