Effective immediately, the Edit Files published nightly (one for CBOT and one for CME), which some firms use for validating firm numbers, trader (broker) ID's and eligible contracts, each have two new records added relating to furthering anonymity in electronic trading:

• Trader 000A -- this is the value, representing an undefined trader, which will be contained in the TREX main block in the opposite broker field beginning this Sunday, June 4, 2006
• Firm 000 -- this is the value, representing an undefined firm, which will be provided in the opposite firm field beginning in the near future.

To access these files, when connecting to the Firm FTP Server, change to the pub/EDIT directory.  The files are named cbt.edit.txt and cme.edit.txt, respectively.  The file layout is located at:

http://www.cme.com../files/s_editlayout.pdf

For more information please see Clearing Advisory 06-136, at:

http://www.cme.com/clearing/clr/clradv/18769.html