A commodity exchange established in 1848 that today trades in both agricultural and financial contracts. The CBOT originally traded only agricultural commodities such as wheat, corn and soybeans. Now, the CBOT offers options and futures contracts on a wide range of products including gold, silver, U.S. Treasury bonds and energy. The CBOT has added electronic trading of futures contracts in recent years, but for decades was an open auction market, where traders meet in a trading pit and primarily use hand signals to execute trades.On October 18th, 2005, the Chicago Board of Trade transformed from a non-profit organization to a for-profit organization with an initial public offering on the NYSE, listed as CBOT Holdings Inc. Its ticker symbol is "BOT".