Kansas City was a peripheral market that needed a boost, so Susan M. Phillips of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) requested that the Merc not insist on its priority over it and over the New York Stock Exchange's newly established futures exchange. After a decade plotting the path to the "ultimate contract," Melamed must have been tempted to insist on being the first to trade it, but he knew that "a favor of this kind to the CFTC would pay many dividends in the years ahead" (Melamed and Tamarkin 1996, p. 295). So Kansas City, not the Merc, was the first to trade index futures.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 772