Futures, Options Exchanges to Continue Strong Outlays on Expansion of Facilities By Jeffrey Zaslow Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
CHICAGO -- After years of cramped floor space and elbow-to-elbow trading pits, the nation's futures and options exchanges spent more than $135 million in 1983 to enlarge old quarters or to move into new ones.</br></br>The building boom, one of the largest in the history of trading on exchanges, promises to continue in 1984, when several exchanges will expand. Encouraged by an eightfold futures-trading volume increase in the past decade, many new options and futures-trading vehicles, and a rally in the stock market, the exchanges anticipate that the ranks of traders will continue to swell in the years ahead.</br></br>They also are betting that federal regulators -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission -- will continue to approve new futures and options contracts at a brisk rate. Although agency jurisdiction on certain stock-index products currently isn't clear, some think the two agencies will work out any turf</br></br>squabbles and continue to approve new trading devices.</br></br>The exchanges "are betting that there will be a break in the regulatory logjam. They all want to be in position (to grow) by having facilities they can move into right away," says Franklin Edwards, director of Columbia University's Center for the Study of Futures Markets.