Chicago, home of the Midwest Stock Exchange and the Cincinnati Stock Exchange, ranks 2nd only to New York as a center for securities trading. There are 3,539 broker and dealer firms in Illinois with 44,172 employees. Some 509 securities investment advisor firms are registered to do business in the state (5th most in the nation). Illinois is headquarters to 179 NASDAQ companies, 22 NASDAQ market makers, 21 AMEX-listed corporations, and 24 Illinois-incorporated NYSE corporations. The top five according to revenues are: Motorola, Walgreens, Abbott Labs, Aon Corp., and Unicom.
The most intensive trading in Chicago takes place on the three major commodity exchanges. The Chicago Board of Trade has set agricultural prices for the world since 1848, especially in soybeans, corn, and wheat. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange specializes in pork bellies (bacon), live cattle, potatoes, and eggs; since 1972, it has also provided a market for world currency futures. The Mid-America Commodity Exchange, the smallest of the three, has a colorful ancestry dating from 1868. It features small-lot futures contracts on soybeans, silver, corn, wheat, and live hogs.