The Commodity Pits Can Be Dangerous
By Jeffrey Taylor and Warren Getler

03/19/1993 The Wall Street Journal PAGE A1

For months, crude-oil trader Allen Marx shrugged off the sharp pain in his abdomen. In the macho culture of commodities pits, no one misses a day of trading because of stomach cramps.

So Mr. Marx guzzled Mylanta antacid and waited for the pain to go away. Instead, he says, "my belly button was beginning to turn from an `inny' to an `outy.'" A belated trip to the doctor found a triple hernia -- ruptures of the abdominal wall -- that required immediate surgery.

The injury, brought on by Mr. Marx's constant bellowing of bids and offers, is common in the latter-day Roman circus known as the open-outcry commodities market. In New York and Chicago, men and women stand shoulder to shoulder on the descending tiers of trading pits, enduring blood, spit and blue language for a shot at big money.

For various reasons, a commodity trader's career lasts an average of 19 months, less time than most players spend in the National Football League. The difference is that every day is game day in the markets. Traders don't wear helmets and shoulder pads. They wear ear plugs and chew Rolaids, quaff Pepto-Bismol and use Chloraseptic throat spray.

"It's very difficult for us to get disability insurance," rasps John Patten, another crude-oil futures trader, whose 14 years of screaming in the pit have permanently damaged his vocal chords. "We're ranked just below sky divers, miners and deep-sea diving instructors."

True, says Donald E. Boggs, chairman of the Disability Income Insurance Committee of the Health Insurance Association of America. "Very few companies still accept them," he says. "Those that do protect themselves with high rates of restrictions. It's one of the highest-risk occupations we insure."

But even insurance doesn't ensure help in a time of need. With huge sums of money on the line, traders have little time to attend to fallen colleagues.

One morning in 1978, for example, just before the opening bell sounded, a corn futures broker named Stan Jones began clutching frantically at his collar. His eyes rolled back in his head, his face flushed and, with a jerk, he pitched backward out of the trading pit.

Just then, the bell rang. Anyone who stopped to help might have lost thousands of dollars, so the corn traders, dressed in brightly colored jackets, began to buy and sell as usual. "He was lying there turning blue," says trader Leo Brieske, who was in the corn pit that day. "But the market was opening and they couldn't stop it. They did what had to be done. They traded."

Mr. Jones, who couldn't be reached for comment, survived the seizure, but quit the trading floor. The CBOT responded to the episode by hiring moonlighting fire-department paramedics to respond to emergencies.

Despite such horror stories, young traders continue to flock to the pits, lured by the prospect of quick riches. For those who survive the rigors of the first year, there is the inevitable search for medical specialists: voice coaches, physical therapists, ear-nose-and-throat doctors, psychologists.

Jim Oliff, a Swiss-franc futures broker at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, has undergone laser surgery three times to remove polyps and small tumors from his vocal chords.

"Every time they operate my voice gets weaker," says Mr. Oliff, who occasionally can't speak for a week at a time. "The doctor is concerned about long-term damage. He says I should consider finding another vocation." Yet Mr. Oliff has no intention of leaving the pits, which provide for him and his family of five.

Dr. Samuel H. Selesnick, an ear-nose-and-throat specialist, says the screaming in commodity pits damages vocal chords by inflicting swollen abrasions called nodules and far more serious polyps, which are precancerous growths. "The nodules frequently respond to voice therapy, but polyps require surgery," he says.

The source of many trading-floor maladies is stress, most of it caused by the prospect of losing tens of thousands of dollars on any given day. "It really gets to people," says William Greenspan, a stock-index futures trader at the Chicago Merc. "One day a guy lost it on the floor and started screaming about Jesus and the money changers. They had to take him away."

Stress has been running especially high at the five New York commodity exchanges, which share a trading floor at the bomb-damaged World Trade Center. No traders were seriously injured in the explosion -- though several traders' cars were destroyed -- but four days afterward a false rumor of a second bomb prompted them to hustle out of the building.

The routine stress of trading also takes its toll. Many of those traders with insurance coverage cite drug and alcohol abuse and stress-related psychological problems when filing disability claims, says Mr. Boggs, the insurance executive.

The Wall Street Hypnosis Center is swamped with traders willing to pay $100 a session for stress reduction. Sam Giarratano, a Chicago chiropractor who sees 50 traders a week, says he owes his suburban mansion and Mercedes automobile, in large part, to traders' chronic aches and pains.

In winter months, colds, flu and bronchitis are epidemic on the trading floor. Doctors say commodity pits, where hundreds of traders wedge themselves into tight rows, are perfect breeding grounds for viruses and bacteria.

"It's the spit, the sputum in the air," says the Chicago Merc's Mr. Greenspan. "You get some guy standing next to you with gum in his mouth screaming, `Buy seven at 70,' and he spits all over you. The first thing I do when I get off the floor is go to the bathroom and wash my hands, my face, my neck. I don't want to go home and kiss my kids until I've washed up."

During flu season, the New York exchanges offer free flu shots. Michael Wilner, a New York Merc board member, deadpans: "If you jam so many chickens into the hen house, you've got to put a lot of antibiotics into their feed."

Recently, a communicable-disease scare of a far more serious sort swept the five New York commodity markets: Two traders came down with confirmed cases of tuberculosis, and the exchanges began a program of mandatory testing. (No additional cases were found.)

"It was pretty scary. I lost 20 pounds while I was sick," says a recovered James McCormack, one of the traders who contracted TB. His doctors don't know how he got the contagious pulmonary disease.

Also worrisome are the serious physical injuries that occur in the pits. Getting poked in the face or neck by a competitor's pen is almost a rite of passage. Fractured vertebrae, herniated discs and broken fingers and feet also occur. At the New York Merc, where petroleum products are traded, eight traders, including Mr. Marx, suffered hernias last year.

With pits dominated by beefy guys in their 20s and 30s -- some of whom pump iron to stay in shape -- physical injuries sometimes can be serious. Noting that his head trader is "out on disability," Mr. Wilner, president of an oil-trading firm, says: "He got hit sideways in the pit, his head jerked and he's out with a fractured vertebra. His doctor said he can't come back to the trade floor."

Most traders take the physical problems in stride. Mr. Marx, for instance, sees humor in his triple-hernia operation. His Christmas card last year included a photograph of his surgery-scarred stomach.