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Neal: Studies of commodities and stocks for the last few years look at open, high/low, and close for their studies. If the market's open 24 hours, there's no urgency to get out there; you just keep going.
Tony: Markets close at least one or two days a week (on the weekends). All markets have a certain time for clearing purposes so they can "mark to the market," or settle prices. Here they do tests for margin calls and margin requirements. You will have primary trading hours, and then you will have the after-hours trading to modify trading scheduling. We all had this discussion 10 years ago. I was on the board of directors at the CBOE at the time when Globex was first announced. CBOE was scrambling to see about doing linkages and joint ventures with exchanges in different time zones. The CBOE did a study on what it would be like to trade 24 hours, and basically we came up with one big problem. The exchange could pull it all off from its own standpoint, no real hurdles, but there was no way to get the staff to the exchange in the late shift because of public transportation not running during those hours. Also, there were security issues and domestic problems.
Now, with the proliferation of some solid technology that would allow for screen-based trading from your home or from your office, allowing for double duty, day and night, public transportation isn't such an issue. As the exchange becomes screen-based, you have less of a requirement for exchange staff to be present. What does 24-hour trading mean to technical analysis? You'll see a lot of asterisks representing values based on a classic closing time. We've had stocks trading past the normal New York closing time for years now. It's very difficult to see what is a close from the night before anyway. I think technical analysis takes the 4:00 to 4:10 EST close and then works backwards from there anyway.
Neal: When trading Chicago style, will there be a need to come down to the exchange?

 
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