Oil options pit empties

The Financial Times reports:

New York’s oil options pit, once a boisterous holdout against electronic markets, has become a sleepy seat of what might be called low-frequency trading.

One day last month 317 crude oil options changed hands on the New York Mercantile Exchange floor — less than one a minute — where traders using shouts and hand signals previously executed 50,000 options daily. In June the pit accounted for just 2 per cent of options on West Texas Intermediate crude, the world’s most active oil options contract, down from 40 per cent four years ago.

Changes.