Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Intermarket magazine
First issue shown above
A couple weeks ago I actively sought to find some issues to Intermarket magazine, which was published in Chicago from 1984 until 1989, and tracked down one of the few existing sets at Santa Clara University. From what I saw, there are literally only a few complete sets and even the Library of Congress doesn't carry one.
For five hours straight I sat with the stack and time just flew by while reading through years of trading history in real time. Initially the magazine was very focused on the Chicago trading floors but by the late 80s it became institutionally focused. One thing I found interesting is that there were a number of authors/editors involved with Intermarket who made great contributions to the history of trading such as Kevin Koy, Bill Falloon, and Bob Tamarkin.
Besides the excellent articles on trading, one of the most enlightening discoveries was to read about electronic trading while it was still being developed, in particular the fears and dreams of the electronic systems which had yet to be built such as the CME's GLOBEX and the CBOT's Aurora.
Below are some photos of the magazine covers which I found interesting and although I did photocopy a large amount of articles, those I won't be able to post on the web. Please note that all of the photos are rather small but if you click on them they will enlarge to be easily read: