The exchange operator CME Group Inc. stated that it would permanently close most of its open-outcry trading pits in Chicago, ending one of the world’s last vestiges of old-fashioned floor trading.CME stated on Tuesday that a number of trading pits that it closed for the moment in March 2020 to avoid the spread of Covid-19 wouldn’t be reopened. Many US workplaces are coming back to life as the pandemic eases.Some of the CME pits being closed include pits for trading agricultural commodities, where traders had haggled over options on soybeans, wheat, cattle and hogs. Floor trading for agricultural commodities has existed in Chicago since the mid-19th century and has long been part of the heritage of CME Group, which took its name from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, now one of the company’s branches. The increase of electronic trading has made the floor traders almost irrelevant in most financial markets, and exchanges have been shutting down trading pits in Chicago and elsewhere during the past two decades.The only part of CME’s trading floor that will stay open is the Eurodollar options pit, which the exchange operator reopened in August with social-distancing.