In part two of his Open Outcry Traders History Project interview, Scott Kohl describes chasing opportunity from S&P to Nasdaq futures, exposing a pager-fueled trading scheme, and navigating the informal justice and politics that shaped life on the floor.
ELMHURST, IL (JLN) ― February 17, 2026 ― Scott Kohl remembers the years after the 1987 stock market crash as a time he branched out in the pits.
He had always traded “all kinds of things” over the phone, from soybeans to gold and silver, carrying those positions while working the S&P 500 pit at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. But when the S&P went quiet after the crash, he looked for opportunities elsewhere. With currencies opening at 7:20 a.m. and the S&P at 8:30, Kohl spent the first 90 minutes of the day in the currency pits before heading to his home base in stock index futures. Later, when the exchange opened a Nasdaq futures pit, he joined a wave of traders who migrated from the S&P and currencies into what he recalls as the wildest ring on the floor.
Kohl said he encouraged a friend from the currency pits to move into the new Nasdaq contract, telling him he would be “one of the guys” and joking that he would come stand next to him if it ever got busy. A few days of trading convinced Kohl. On one particularly strong session in the S&P, Kohl made about $60,000 to $70,000. He called his friend after the close to ask how he had done in that session. The answer stunned Kohl: about $350,000, made by scalping in the Nasdaq pit. Similar numbers followed the next day, Kohl recalled, and by Wednesday he was literally standing next to his friend, keeping his promise and shifting a chunk of his attention to the booming market.
The risk in the Nasdaq pit led to an unusual culture of cooperation, Kohl said. Because locals sometimes needed to take 20 contracts or more to get into a trade, they were eager to lay off 10 or 15 as quickly as possible. That meant traders often shared pieces of risk with one another, not out of generosity but because the exposure was too large to comfortably hold alone. As more locals arrived from the S&P and currencies, the pit developed a reputation for volatility and camaraderie, with traders constantly cutting and sharing size to manage the swings.
Kohl also recalled a notorious episode involving pagers that, in his view, crossed the line from savvy trading into theft. He said a clerk at a major Wall Street firm, he believed Goldman Sachs or Salomon Brothers, struck a deal with a local in the Nasdaq pit. The trader carried two beepers, one in each pocket. When one side buzzed, he would buy; when the other buzzed, he would sell. Before learning about the arrangement, Kohl said, he thought the man was one of the best traders he had ever seen. He remembered watching the Nasdaq futures go double limit down in the pit, in a panic, as the trader stepped in to buy roughly 200 contracts, quickly making an estimated $5 million when the market snapped back.
Only later, Kohl said, did it become clear that the trader’s apparent nerve was backed by advance information. The firm was preparing to lift the market off limit down, and the pager signals effectively told the local when to step in. The story moved from rumor to fact on the floor, according to Kohl, when the trader allegedly sold the beepers to another local before getting in trouble. Regulators and exchange officials seemed unsure how to handle such a case, he said. Traditional rules were clear about violations involving order fillers tipping off locals about big orders. A trader with pagers in his pockets and a link to a firm’s desk presented a murkier problem. By the time the exchange fully grasped the situation, Kohl said, the trader had quietly left.
Despite tales like that, Kohl insists the pits were filled with “some of the most honorable men” he ever met. He described a culture of “forced honesty” in which reputation governed who got business. If a trader routinely misallocated trades or failed to honor fills, word spread quickly. Locals might discover a pattern in the break room, swapping stories about someone whose errors had already cost several of them thousands of dollars. The informal remedy was simple: they stopped trading with him. Order fillers, hearing the same complaints, might lean on the offender in future trades, hitting bids or lifting offers more aggressively when he tried to show off size.
For most of his first 18 years on the floor, Kohl said, mistakes were handled with a handshake. If two traders disagreed on a fill, they would often split the loss or work out a compromise, preserving relationships and keeping business flowing. Some brokers would grant “most favored” status to locals who helped absorb errors, giving them better access to order flow in return. That informal system began to erode, in his view, when the exchange installed high-resolution cameras that could capture hand signals down to the ridges of traders’ fingers.
The new technology changed the tone of the pits, Kohl said. Disputes that once ended with a quick split of the loss moved into the camera room, where traders argued frame by frame over who had signaled what. Instead of assuming the other party was honest and working things out, they fought over whose fault a bad trade had been. Kohl likened the change to the broader information overload of the digital age, where any topic can generate dozens of conflicting accounts. On the floor, the cameras made it harder to rely on shared norms and easier to dig in and litigate every mistake.
Kohl also played a role in exchange governance, serving on pit committees, business conduct panels and any group he could join. With a father who had been vice chairman of the Merc, his long-term ambition was to follow a similar path and eventually sit on the board of governors. Over time, he learned more about how the institution worked and began to question whether he was ready, or whether he ever would be.
He recalled serving on a divisional nominating committee that was supposed to recommend the best candidates to help run the exchange. After receiving the most votes in his division, Kohl became chairman of that committee. What surprised him, he said, were the phone calls that followed. Over the span of a couple of hours, four of the Merc’s most powerful figures phoned to congratulate “kiddo” on his new role and urge him to nominate himself. Kohl found the idea hypocritical, he said. If he had just interviewed a slate of candidates, how could he credibly tell members that he himself was the best choice?
The pressure almost worked. Kohl said the calls made him feel flattered and tempted to see whether his father would be proud. When he visited his father to talk it through, the elder Kohl, a former long-serving board member, told him not to do it. The problem, he explained, was that his son was misreading the situation. Those four leaders were not a unified team waiting to embrace a new recruit. They were four independent power centers. Within six months on the board, his father warned, Scott would inevitably vote against one or more of them, turning powerful allies into potential enemies.
Kohl’s father believed his son would excel as a governor but advised him to wait until he had much more money. Looking back, Scott said his father regretted joining the board before he was financially secure. Serving on the board without that cushion could make it harder to withstand political and business pressure. If floor trading and the Merc’s old structure had persisted, Kohl said, he would have pursued the dream of serving on the board. But as the pits emptied and the Merc evolved into a modern electronic marketplace, he watched a different dynamic take hold.
In his view, many of the same people who governed the exchange when the floor closed remained in place for years, largely because participation in elections dwindled. With few members voting, incumbents were hard to dislodge. Kohl spoke about that change without animosity, but with a sense that the governance culture had shifted along with the markets themselves – another sign, he said, that the exchanges and their politics often foreshadowed broader changes in society.
