Wall Street barber's empty chairs echo decline in trading pits. CME announced it was shutting its future trading pits by July 2.

Crain's New York reports:

Jack Cappello has groomed Wall Street since 1959. He's seen a lot of changes in half a century of being a neighborhood barber.

Another is coming this summer as CME Group Inc. moves ahead with plans to shut most of its futures pits.

Mr. Cappello, 72, owns Jack's Unisex Corp., now in a glass-covered corridor just steps above the Hudson River. He got the word about the pits from a New York Mercantile Exchange trader who stopped in for a shave before the market opened Thursday.

"They are shutting down; I hope it doesn't happen," the barber said. "We lost more than 50% of our business" as Nymex scaled back pit trading in the past seven years.

Chicago-based CME said the futures pits on trading floors on the Nymex and Chicago Mercantile Exchange would close by July 2 because they account for just one percent of futures volume as business migrates to electronic trading. Options pits will remain open.

E-mails were sent to members Wednesday night and announcements were made on the trading floors the next day, Chris Grams, a spokesman for CME, said in an e-mail. The exchange will hold meetings in Chicago and New York next week.

The wintry weather and overcast skies outside the Nymex on Thursday morning matched the mood on the trading floor.

"It's a little depressing, but we have to find out at our meeting next Wednesday what the specifics are on what they are going to allow us to do," Roger Smith, who became a Nymex member in the mid-1980s and trades through his floor brokerage firm Smith & Moore, said Thursday during a cigarette break after the opening bell. "It was kind of a surprise, but it's inevitable."

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