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trading commodities. The commodities ranged from grains to precious metals, and New York and Chicago (perhaps due to their geographical advantages) were developed as major centers for warehousing and distributing agricultural goods. At that time many smaller exchanges, numbered in hundreds, began to disappear and most of the trading was shifted to these large centers. Today New York and Chicago have the distinct position of having the major commodity exchanges in the US, if not the world. These include:

The Chicago Board of Trade (CBT) for grains, bonds, and short-term interest rates.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) for livestock, currencies, and stock index futures.
The New York Commodities Exchange (COMEX) for precious metals, copper, and aluminum.
The New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE) for cotton and the dollar index.
The New York Mercantile Exchange (MERC) for petroleum and precious metals.
The New York Futures Exchange (NYFE) for commodity and stock indices.
The New York Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange (CSCE) for coffee, sugar, and cocoa.

*Note: In June of 2004, the two historic exchanges, the New York Cotton Exchange (NYCE) and the Coffee, Sugar, & Cocoa Exchange (CSCE) merged to form the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT).
As a result of this merger, all previous exchanges and subsidiaries ceased to exist, including the Coffee, Sugar, & Cocoa Exchange, the New York Cotton Exchange, the Citrus Associates of the New York Cotton Exchange, the New York Futures Exchange (NYFE), and the FINEX Exchange. All markets are now referred to as the New York Board of Trade or NYBOT.

Whereas many of these exchanges started as centers to trade real goods, today most of the trades in these exchanges are on paper (now mostly the electronic version of paper — the computer) with only a very small percentage of the contracts (which are the paper representations of the commodities) resulting in actual delivery of commodities. In other words, a person buying coffee contracts does not necessarily anticipate receiving coffee beans in his backyard when the contracts come due, unless he wants to. …