Since 1982, foreign currency options have turned into much more than a Philadelphia story.

VW officials said its computers had been used to trade in foreign currency options.

In September 1987, the exchange became the first to open night trading in foreign currency options.

Foreign currency options are traded over-the-counter with no central exchange to publish prices.

Last year more than 700 million shares of stock, a record, changed hands, compared with eight million foreign currency options contracts.

Foreign currency option contracts were introduced in 1984.

And new instruments such as foreign currency options have made it possible to lock in profits and minimize losses.

Philadelphia has halted the sale of exchange memberships and foreign currency options seats until the board acts on the proposal.

Digital options involve complex offsetting trades in foreign currency options to produce losses.

And exchange officials have been putting perhaps their most aggressive efforts into finding ways to fuel already strong demand for their newest products, foreign currency options.

However, foreign currency options are regulated in the United States and trade on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange.

Todd Ouida, 25, became a foreign currency option trader for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of the north tower.

Based on the premise that money never sleeps, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange began pre-dawn trading today in foreign currency options and futures.

Wednesday evening Treasury Secretary James A. Baker 3d is expected to preside over the opening of night trading in foreign currency options.

The Philadelphia Stock Exchange began night trading last night in foreign currency options to accommodate traders in the Far East.

The Philadelphia Stock Exchange is considering ringing the opening bell for its foreign currency options trading at 3 A.M. to capture European business.

Those were years of considerable growth for the Philex, the nation's oldest stock exchange which, in recent years, has developed as a dominant marketplace for foreign currency options.

In 2004, NAB discovered that as a result of unauthorised spot trades on its foreign currency options desk, losses totalling A$360 million had been covered up.

Securities Still the Mainstay Foreign currency options are the hottest products traded in Philadelphia, but the exchange's bread and butter is still securities.

A foreign currency option gives a customer the chance to purchase a fixed amount of foreign currency at a specified exchange rate at a set date in the future.

Mr. Lawler, 29, is a foreign currency options broker at Tullett and Tokyo Forex Inc. in New York.

For example, Mr. Hanneman said, Mr. Staloff developed the world's first foreign currency option product, which is now traded at the Philadelphia Exchange.

"There are other factors working here besides trade," said John Prout, a senior vice president and head of the foreign currency options department at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.

In Philadelphia, where the Stock Exchange conducts night trading in foreign currency options, about 1,000 option contracts were traded in the first hour after the attack, a spokesman said.

"No intervention can be effective without the Fed," said John Prout, senior vice president and director of foreign currency options trading at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.