While several contingent claims are traded routinely against many states such as insurance policies, futures, financial options, among others, the set of outcomes is far greater than the set of claims.

One coach, Buddy Parker, believed in getting rid of all young players and using only more experienced ones, Rooney remembers, so the Steelers routinely traded draft picks for veteran players.

Despite the overseas allegations, Mr. Deripaska's reputation is relatively clean in Russia, where garish accusations are routinely traded during business disputes.

"We have enormous wealth tied up in vehicles and they are routinely traded with little information," Mr. Maier said, adding that auto makers, auction houses and dealers shared "an economic incentive to not be too careful."

Future pork, possibly even pork as yet unborn, was routinely traded by the merchants.

The strategy of de-emphasizing the links between production and refining got a boost when Texaco acquired Getty, which had routinely traded crude oils.

Objects created for religious, ritualistic or tribal reasons, like African fertility statues, pre-Columbian stone figures and Oceanic masks, are now routinely traded - and admired - as works of art.

These cases are not all directly related, but together they provide a view of a government where influence was routinely traded and political allies became involved in secret business deals to reap profits at the taxpayers' expense.

Trading volume was extremely low, with only about 660,000 shares changing hands, as opposed to the hundreds of millions of shares that are routinely traded daily at Nasdaq Japan's American cousin.