Easy Money: Handicrafts on the Floor of the Chicago Exchange

NORTHBROOK, IL -- With their frenzied flailing and lunging contortions, the futures traders of Chicago are the world's most powerful mimes. Each business day their animated gestures are used to buy and sell a trillion dollars in commodities, everything from bonds to bacon. There is a precise choreography in those fidgets and twitches, and an astute investor -- like you -- would appreciate a rational explanation of this trading code.

However, this is Chicago, so you can forget about the rational. The trading code is a slapdash accumulation of signs, jokes and idiosyncrasies. Like the city, it is blunt, fast, funny and it works. An initiation into the full mysteries of trading semiotics might require two months of your undivided attention. This paltry introduction can hope only to enjoyably confuse you.

Let's start.

Lesson I: Das Kapital und Das Digital

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