Business Notes INVESTIGATIONS

Ever since January, when an FBI probe of shady trading practices rocked Chicago's commodities pits, members of New York City's markets have wondered when the spotlight would be turned on them. Last week the waiting was over. On Thursday morning U.S. postal inspectors and officials of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates the pits, raided four of New York's five commodities exchanges. The Feds combed through records and served subpoenas on at least a dozen individuals in a search for evidence of suspected criminal and civil violations by an estimated 50 traders.

While the New York and Chicago probes are being handled by two different collaborations of Government agencies, the groups are looking for many of the same kinds of illicit trading techniques. One tactic believed to be under investigation is "front running," in which traders assure profits by executing trades for their own accounts before they carry out their customers' orders.