Byline: ANN SAPHIR
The Chicago Board of Trade is losing marketshare in its most lucrative futures contract, gold, and its would-be acquirer, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, is to blame.
Starting in 2004, the CBOT waged an aggressive-and successful-campaign to take gold-trading volume away from the New York Mercantile Exchange by offering gold futures on the CBOT's electronic trading system. But in December, the Nymex, which previously had only offered face-to-face trading in gold, started taking volume back after it began offering its futures contracts on the CME's electronic trading platform.
"There was a big gap there that needed to be filled in the electronic ...