New York Mercantile Exchange

NYMEX

Serious Information

Trivia

The New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc, is the world's largest physical commodity futures exchange and the preeminent trading forum for energy and precious metals.

Commodity exchanges began in the middle of the ninteenth century, when businessmen began organizing market forums for buying and selling of commodities. These marketplaces provided a place for buyers and sellers to set the quality, standards, and establish rules of business. By the late 1800s about 1600 marketplaces had sprung up at ports and railroad stations. The Butter and Cheese Exchange of New York was founded in 1872 by a group of dairy merchants who were trying to bring order and standardization to the chaotic conditions that existed in their industry. Gradually, the product base was broadened and the name was changed to the New York Mercantile Exchange 10 years later. In 1882, the name changed to the New York Mercantile Exchange when opening trade to dried fruits, canned goods, and poultry. As centralized warehouses were built into principal market centers such as New York and Chicago in the early twentieth century, exchanges in smaller cities began to disappear giving more business to the exchanges such as the NYMEX in bigger cities. In 1933, the COMEX was established through the merger of four smaller exchanges; the National Metal Exchange, the Rubber Exchange of New York, the National Raw Silk Exchange, and the New York Hide Exchange. On August 3, 1994, NYMEX and COMEX merged as NYMEX.

Transactions executed on the Exchange avoid the risk of counterparty default because the Exchange clearinghouse acts as the counterparty to every trade. Trading is conducted through two divisions, the NYMEX Division, home to the energy, platinum, and palladium markets; and the COMEX Division, on which all other metals trade.

The Exchange pioneered the development of energy futures and options contracts 26 years ago as means of bringing price transparency and risk management to a vital market.

The Exchange plays a vibrant role in the commercial, civic, and cultural life of New York. It provides thousands of jobs in the financial services and allied industries and, through the New York Mercantile Exchange Charitable Foundation, supports cultural and social service programs downtown.


The wide array of trading markets provided by the Exchange include futures & options contracts for crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, electricity, gold, silver, copper, aluminum, and platinum; futures contracts for coal, propane, and palladium,and options contracts on the price differentials between crude oil and gasoline, crude oil and heating oil, Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude oil, and various futures contract months (calendar spreads) for light, sweet crude; Brent crude; gasoline; heating oil; and natural gas.

The Exchange also lists NYMEX miNY energy futures, fractional light, sweet crude oil and natural gas futures contracts that offer smaller investors and traders the opportunity for an efficient means of participating in energy markets. The contracts trade via the NYMEX ClearPort electronic trading system and clear through the New York Mercantile Exchange clearinghouse. NYMEX miNYFutures

The Exchange also clears off-exchange trades for market participants who wish to avoid counterparty credit risk by using standardized contracts for natural gas, crude oil, refined products, and electricity.

Investors looking for a fast-paced dynamic market with excellent liquidity that can act as a counterweight to the stocks and bonds in their portfolio will want to learn more about the New York Mercantile Exchange energy and metals futures and options markets. The Exchange is a public market forum and anyone can play a role in these vital global markets. Participation is not difficult, but a few requirements must be met.

The first step is to open an account through a licensed, Series 3, commodity futures broker. The broker will be your point of entry to the markets, so make your selection with the same care and due diligence as you would any other financial services professional upon whom you rely. Once you decide on the type of broker fits your needs and abilities how do you know who is reputable? The first place to check is with the National Futures Association which keeps records of any disciplinary actions against brokers. Through its online system, Background Affiliation Status Information Center (BASIC), NFA makes available registration information and futures-related actions contributed by NFA, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the U.S. futures exchanges. For registration information that is not available in BASIC, contact NFA's Information Center at (800) 621-3570.


All positions on the New York Mercantile Exchange are marked-to-market each day by calculating the gain or loss in each contract position resulting from changes in the price of the futures or options contracts each trading day.

The overwhelming majority of Exchange trading activity is executed by open outcry on the trading floor during the day.

NYMEX miNY™ energy futures, fractional futures contracts for light, sweet crude oil and natural gas that offer smaller investors and traders an efficient means of participating in the energy markets, are traded through a broker or directly via the NYMEX ClearPort® electronic trading system.

Hedgers and speculators - also called investors - have divergent goals, which is why their presence in the markets complements each other so well.

Hedgers do not necessarily seek to profit in the futures markets. They use the futures to help stabilize the revenues or costs of their business operations because they have an offsetting position in the physical market. A gain or loss in the futures market is usually offset to some degree by the corresponding loss or gain in the market for the underlying physical commodity.

Speculators, to the contrary, do seek to profit from market movement because they do not have offsetting physical positions. However, for every speculator who tries to profit from a rising market there are those who believe they can profit in a falling market. Most speculators don't try to push the market in any direction - a fool's errand if there ever was one - instead they follow the trend, attempting to time their transactions by buying low and selling high - or first selling high and later buying back low. This flexibility to initiate a strategy as either a buyer or a seller, depending on your view, is one of the beauties of the futures markets.

Over the years, the Exchange shifted towards industrial products. It was the first Exchange to successfully trade energy futures and options with the introduction of the heating oil futures contract in 1978. Today, the Exchange is the world's preeminent energy market and precious metals markets; agricultural products do not trade on the Exchange.

http://www.nymex.com/ the website of the exchange

The official address of NYMEX headquarters and trading facility is:

One North End Avenue, New York, NY 10282-1101.

The company has additional offices in Houston, Washington D.C., London, and Hong Kong.

AMEX, NYSE & NASDAQ are the other major stock exchanges of the city.
In 2001 US energy exchange Nymex set up a new oil trading floor in Dublin, Ireland, in a move it hopes will lure disenchanted dealers from London.

Trivia

New York City, officially the City of New York, is the most populous city in the United States and the most densely populated major city in North America. Located in the state of New York, New York City has a population of over 8.1 million within an area of 321 square miles (approximately 830 km²).

The city is a center for international finance, fashion, entertainment and culture, and is widely considered to be one of the world's major global cities with an extraordinary collection of museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations and financial markets. It is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations.

The Dutch established New Amsterdam in 1613, which was granted self-government in 1652 under Peter Stuyvesant. The British conquered the city in September 1664 and renaming it "New York" after the Duke of York and Albany. The Dutch briefly regained it in August 1673, renaming the city "New Orange", but ceded it permanently in November 1674.

Major Sport clubs set in the city

New York Yankees MLB Baseball
New York Mets MLB Baseball

New York Rangers NHL Ice Hockey
New York Giants NFL Gridiron
New York Jets NFL Gridiron
New York Knicks NBA Basketball
New York Liberty WNBA Basketball
New York Red Bulls MLS Soccer
Brooklyn Wonders ABA Basketball

Movies set on subject of NYSE

Wall Street (1987) starring Charlie Sheen (Bud Fox ) Michael Douglas (Gordon Gekko ) directed by Oliver Stone - A story of greed about a corrupt Gekko, trying to destroy a firm and it's employees to make money.

Trading Places (1983) starring Dan Aykroyd ( Louis Winthorpe III )
Eddie Murphy ( Billy Ray Valentine) Jamie Lee Curtis (Ophelia): An upper class investor and a street down and out find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two racist millionaires. In the the movie the two try to use a stock exchange trick to get their own back on the millionaires

The Bonfire of the Vanities (film) (1990), a film adaptation directed by Brian De Palma was released and starred Tom Hanks as Sherman McCoy, Bruce Willis as Peter Fallow, an uncredited F. Murray Abraham as Abe Weiss, Melanie Griffith as Maria Ruskin, and Kim Cattrall as Judy McCoy, Sherman's wife. Financial "Master of the Universe" Sherman McCoy sees his life unravel.

Boiler Room is a 2000 U.S. drama, written and directed by Ben Younger, and starring Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel and Nia Long. Other characters in the film were played by Ben Affleck, Nicky Katt, Scott Caan, Tom Everett Scott, Ron Rifkin and Jamie Kennedy. Aboust the despicable Boiler room crooks who try to con their way into money.

Glengarry Glen Ross is the title of a 1992 movie, based on the 1984 Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning play of the same name. The film differs from the play mainly with the insertion of a single scene written by Mamet. The scene involves a character named Blake, played by Alec Baldwin in one of his most critically acclaimed performances, who gives the main characters a more immediate motivation for selling real estate —namely that their jobs are on the line.

The surname York, according to a website the house of names, is part of the ancient legacy of the Anglo Saxon tribes of Britain. It is a product of when the family lived in the county of Yorkshire. Yorkshire, which was the largest county in northern England, was divided into three administrative ridings: North Riding, West Riding, and East Riding. The town of York was the military capital of Roman Britain, the capital of Northumbria, and seat of an Archbishop. Yorkshire was also the home to the House of York, which was an English royal dynasty from 1461 to 1485. The reigning members of the House of York were Edward IV, Edward V and Richard III. Their rivalry with the House of Lancaster resulted in the Wars of the Roses, which lasted from 1455 - 85 and ended when the Lancastrian Henry VII united the two houses by marrying Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV. The surname york belongs to the large category of Anglo-Saxon habitation names, which are derived from pre-existing names for towns, villages, parishes, or farmsteads.Spelling variations include: Yorke and others. First found in Wiltshire where they were seated from very ancient times, before and after the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Names for New York in other nations
Nova Iorque = Portugal

Nuova York - Italy

Urbs Novum Eboracum = Latin

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