I've heard trades called in the headset before they were printed. The information you get from the pit and Ben is priceless.
I have a link to a video which demonstrates buy/sell programs working very well, also included you might hear who is buying or selling, and the screams from the pit. If you PM me, I might provide the link.
As far as the pit/broadcaster indicator goes, this is what I was thinking. I would focus more on what Ben says through a voice recognition system(although difficult because of the continous stream of sound) and maybe use pit noise as an exit strategy(sound intensity measurment) just after the extremes of the shouting or use a more technical indicator like ticks. For example, you could program your VRS to recognize key phrases like Morgan is buying, Paper is selling, paper is fading, paper is pushing, or key numbers like fifty bid goes to sixty bid and the VRS would recognize these, determine the speed between the recognized words and have an automated trade setup. You could setup trades based off of whether you liked to trade along with morgan or the locals, and when the VRS recognized a word like morgan is selling with a print in the direction of the sell, you could automate the system to go short with a bracket order set for a target of the average rally in price and have a trailing stop. Into all of this you could incorporate other indicators which would measure order flow and price velocity. This is all just a fantasy idea, a really expensive system to develop that would be useless when the pits are done away with and everything becomes electronic.
Remember when maria dropped the bomb on Bernanke. Checkout the video , which just so happens to be live from the CME where you get to see pit traders reacting to the news. I wish I would have known who sold first that day in reaction to the news. Am I the only one who thinks that this was a setup. Why else do they bring Maria right next to the pits, but to create more fear from the news. Honestly, who put in huge shorts that day before she popped the news. CNBC does this stuff everyday, especially with CEO appearances. I remember last year some traders started getting wise and would scan what CEO's were going to be on the show for the day. Perfect example is when NVAX CEO comes on CNBC for the first time and the stock nearly doubles(Oct 25) I watched that trade live and it went vertical for probably 8min. The second time the CEO comes on, people shorted right after the appearance was over( longs got suckered). Later on tradethenews.com started putting on CNBC's daily schedule.
Maria video (you have to use E-explorer) One of these link will work hopefully.
http://video.msn.com/v/us/v.htm?g=83584dc9-4715-49b4-84b9-764634ecae2d&f=rss34
http://video.msn.com/v/us/req.aspx?...=83584dc9-4715-49b4-84b9-764634ecae2d&f=rss34