Financial History 25th Anniversary Special Edition (104, Fall 2012) | Page 32

To be sure, the transformation in commodity markets has not been without
some resistance. “There is always the fear
factor,” says Baker. “At first brokers were
afraid that indexing of futures trading and
the rise of electronic transactions would
reduce or eliminate their business. In the
event, just the opposite has happened.
Volumes and dollar values on all the
exchanges, physical and electronic, is 15 to
30 times what it was before.”
He stresses that is not simply a function
of computing power. “In every market
there is a very close link between transparency and concentration of volume and
growth. Where there is faster and wi \