Institutional backing saved the Chicago futures market from collapse at its 1972 opening.

Evidence

There was silence on the other end of the phone… . Suddenly, fate intervened. “Hold it a minute, Leo,” she shouted into my earpiece, “Tom Theobald just walked in.” Theobald was then the chairman of Continental Bank. A couple of minutes later, but what seemed to me like an eternity, Smelcer was back on the phone. “Leo, we’re okay. Tom said to go ahead. You’ve got your money.” I looked at the time, it was 7:17 a.m. We had three full minutes to spare before the opening of our currency markets. (Melamed and Tamarkin 1996, pp. 358-59 and 362-63) In only slightly less dramatic circumstances, John Hiatt and his colleagues at the Options Clearing Corporation stayed awake not just on Monday, October 19, but on the next two nights, and then spent the entire following weekend in their offices dealing with a particular problem case (Hiatt interview 1). — Donald MacKenzie & Yuval Millo, Constructing a Market, Performing Theory, 163

Categorization

• CANDY: A finance-historical cliffhanger: currency futures nearly didn’t open because of missing wiring money, saved three minutes before the bell by a bank chairman’s word.