This is damn interesting.

Headphones recommend it.

In April of 1873, an unhappy man walked along Clark Street in downtown Chicago.

His name was Amar de Beloy.

There was a gun in his pocket and a nickel,

enough for one final glass of beer. He entered Kirchhoff's tavern and sat at a table,

then changed his mind about the beer. He drew his gun, placed the muzzle at his forehead,

and pulled the trigger. The bullet careened along the inside of his skull like a speed skater on a banked turn. It stopped at the left temple, sparing his

brain. Beloy rose and staggered to the bar, shaking hands with the horrified men he passed along

the way. Upon reaching the bartender,

he apologized in all sincerity for the inconvenience he had just caused. And then he collapsed.

Beloy was a speculator, or plunger, as they were then known, at the Chicago Board of Trade,

where traders negotiated contracts for the future sale of wheat

and other such goods. The value of these contracts was based on, or derived from, the current

price of wheat. Hence, they would one day take the name we use today, derivatives. In the 1870s, with few

rules in place, a man could make a fortune plunging wheat.

He could also lose a fortune, and with it the will to live.

Indeed, the string of early derivative traders taking their own lives

grew long enough that one writer gave it a name, the crimson threat of suicide.

The scale of today's derivatives market is almost too vast to comprehend.

It's measured in trillions of dollars.

Traders, aided by the most sophisticated software money can buy, place bets, billions per second,

...