Over the past few days I was in Brazil and noticed that even though the BM&F trading floor closed in mid 2009, it remains intact as a backdrop for financial newscasts. Because it's in the unattractive downtown of Sao Paulo, I can't imagine it getting occupied by a large trading firm like in many other cities or even turned into a gym like floors in Chicago (old CME) or Singapore (former SIMEX) were made into so my belief is that they don't have anything else to use it for and just leave it as is.
The above photo dating from 2008 shows one of the most active pits at BM&F and as I previously mentioned, there were zero women working on the trading floor that I ever observed from a few trips there. Yellow badges are brokers and blue badges are for locals so as you can see it's not a local dominated pit like every other exchange generally has. Because of this, I always got the impression that the BM&F pits were more 'foot solider' oriented than others and those making decisions could use the wireless handsets directly into the floor broker's ear. A friend of a friend used to work on that floor so hopefully I can learn whatever handsignals were used there.
Some friends who trade SPs from Rio (nice gig, eh?) let me know after a recent skid of hard luck what SP really stands for, "super pica" which in Portuguese translates to "big cock." Cutural differences aside, traders are pretty much the same anywhere and speak the same language.
