| Sumario: | Globex, a 24-hour futures trading system, has suffered from low volumes since its launch in June 1992. On November 4, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), one of Globex's developers, suggested that it and the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), another developer, surrender control of the system to a consortium of leading exchanges. The CBOT agrees with that suggestion. However, such a change might not make much of a difference. From the beginning, Globex was too ambitious and poorly conceived. The CME, its primary mover, wanted to increase its own diminishing share of world futures trading by making its contracts available to electronic traders worldwide and wanted other exchanges to be able to list their contracts on the system as well, but the technology of Reuters, the other developer, was not up to the task. Traders find the system cumbersome to use. In addition, the global demand that its sponsors envisioned for their products has not come about.
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