Scarlet & Letters

Digging through some old emails today (and missing a trade I needed in the process), there were a couple interesting origins that are worth passing along.  Both were submitted by legit trading floor veterans who both had 20-30+ years experience mostly in the NY pits.  A lot of people wonder about where the year colors originated from and also how futures months got coded in letters, well here's their explainations:

"In NY (COMEX) their were only 5 hours in the trading day (5 one hour brackets) (A, B, C, D & E). The first available letter for month code is F."

"Red Sales were so called because the 13th month and forward were written  on the black board with red chalk - hence current color coding years in Chicago long-term fixed income.  The Coffee and Sugar Exchange used yellow chalk and they called these  trades yellow, e.g., Yellow September."

If anyone wants to dispute these explanations I'd love to hear about it.  However, one frustrating thing is that I've had people dispute things I know with absolute certainty that are true based upon what I saw and used myself so if anyone is going to dispute things then make sure your memory is correct.  Any and all criticism is welcomed though, info 'at' tradingpithistory.com