JonesTrading
JonesTrading is an agency-only broker-dealer specializing in large block trades for its buy side customers. The firm's Westlake Village trading floor is home to 36 sales traders and 8 agency traders.

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Russell Investments
Russell Investments is a global provider of investment products and services, as well as a pioneer in multimanager investing and the creator of the Russell Indexes.

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Rosenblatt Securities
Rosenblatt Securities is a New York-based agency brokerage that was founded by Richard (Dick) Rosenblatt in 1979 as an NYSE floor brokerage. As trading has become more electronic, Rosenblatt has evolved into a boutique that helps its buy-side clients achieve best execution while navigating the new market structure.

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The Philadelphia Stock Exchange
The Philadelphia Stock Exchange, created in 1790, was the first U.S. stock exchange. And in 1975, the exchange became the first regional exchange to trade equity options. The PHLX began as a floor-based exchange, trading via an auction market. It has evolved into a hybrid market with the AUTOM--Automated Options Market systemwhich was introduced in 1988. AUTOM, which is still used today, was created to allow electronic delivery of option orders from member firms to the exchange floor, automatic execution of certain orders, and electronic confirmation of orders. The system has been through numerous upgrades and has changed dramatically since 1988, but is still the primary automated execution system used on the floor today. The PHLX no longer has an equities trading floor, which was once adjacent to the options floor. Equities are now traded solely electronically via the exchange. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange will most likely face more changes ahead, once its planned acquisition by Nasdaq is completed. This photo gallery takes a look at the technology and structure of the options floor, which has undergone tremendous change over the years, and will probably endure further changes with the pending acquisition.

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Weeden & Co.
The trading floor at Weeden & Co.'s Greenwich, Conn., headquarters is designed to foster teamwork, cooperation and communication among the full-service institutional broker's 75-plus traders, sales traders and assistants on the floor, and about 25 other traders in its regional branches in Boston, San Francisco and Chicago. The floor services Weeden's 1,500 institutional clients with NYSE/Regional, Nasdaq/OTC and program trading. To handle the growing volume of international trading, Weeden recently added a 24-hour desk that is home to eight to 10 sales and trading personnel. And by the end of 2008, Weeden expects to add options and convertible bond trading expertise to its portfolio of services.

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BGC Partners
BGC Partners, a fixed-income, inter-dealer broker, spent the end of the year gearing up for two important technology upgrades. The first is an internal firm-wide roll out of BGC Trader, a trading graphical user interface developed for BGC by eSpeed. The firm, which has traditionally been a voice broker, plans to offer a hybrid model where traders can call orders into a broker or type in orders through a trading graphical user interface it calls BGC Trader. Both orders interact with the same liquidity pool. This hybrid model will eventually be available across all the IDB's products, but has first been rolled out with credit default swaps in Europe. BGC's second important technology upgrade is its merger with eSpeed, which will be finalized this quarter. The merged companies will be traded on the Nasdaq and called BGC Partners. The merger will allow BGC to make further in-house enhancements to BGC Trader as electronic brokering in the IDB market evolves. To read more about the BGC Trader rollout, click here

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UBS Trading Floor
With 1,400 seats, 2,000 computers and 5,000 monitors, the UBS trading floor is noted by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest single trading floor in the world. The floor is home to traders, sales traders, quants, technology support, executives and others among its various groups, which include fixed income, commodities, currencies, money markets, derivatives, equities, international trading, algorithmic trading, direct market access, program trading and more. UBS manages more than 1,689,000 transactions a day. The firm deals in almost every asset class and trades across almost every region. The photo gallery below will take you through the mammoth trading floor, offering both big-picture photos to illustrate the size of the floor as well as close-ups of some of the trading desks to offer more detail on the technology UBS uses. A special thank you to UBS for allowing us to feature their floor.

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ING Investment Management
ING Investment Management's equities trading operation has gone through a transformation over the past two years since Nanette Buziak, head equity trader, took the helm. When Buziak joined ING, she was charged with consolidating the firm's two trading floors — one in Hartford, Conn., and the other in New York. The result is an eight-seat trading desk and equities investment operation that handles trading for $60 billion in domestic and international equities pictured in this photo gallery. The consolidated floor is located on Park Avenue in Manhattan. To view the technology used on ING's desk peruse the gallery.

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Knight Capital Group
Knight's trading floor, built two years ago, currently accommodates 321 traders. Most of the technology used is proprietary, such as its order management system, which is a core technology for Knight's institutional business. In the photos that follow you can see how the floor is structured and who sit where, as well as some close-ups of the technology used on specific desks. Later on in the photo gallery we also take a peek at Knight's data center and describe its functions. A special thank you to Knight for allowing us access to their floor and to our talented photographer, Sacha Lecca, for his photography.

If you would like your trading floor featured, please email Kmassaro@cmp.com

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