I’m in London for a conference at the LSE. Here with the family, and we’ve seen most of the typical sites (it’s my family’s first time in the city).

The highlight for me, however, was watching the ring trading at the London Metal Exchange. (Yes.  You don’t need to tell me.  I know I’m weird.)  Very interesting.  Each metal trades for five minutes–in theory.  In reality, there is desultory bidding and offering until the last 30-45 seconds of the 5 minute period, at which time trading really picks up.  A visual illustration of volume clustering.  Although it is face-to-face open outcry trading, it is very different than Chicago.  It is more like a sequence of call auctions, rather than a true continuous auction.  Moreover, the trading crowd is small–there were 15 people in the ring, and about twice that many clustering around it.  I’m glad I could see it, after having worked with LME data and studied metals rather extensively for about 18 years (yikes!)

Thanks to Allan Schoenberg for helping to set things up, and special thanks to Miriam Heywood at the LME for giving us the tour.