For all of you traders who are loyal readers of Entertainment Weekly and are totally psyched about this morning’s Golden Globe nominations (all two of you), Cantor Fitzgerald has a fantastic opportunity in the works. This week, Cantor filed an application with the CFTC to launch an exchange based on Hollywood box office receipts. The proposed Cantor Exchange’s Domestic Box Office Receipt contracts would be a hedging/profiting tool based on the first four weeks of a film’s box office revenues.

It’s doubtful that there’s a lot of demand among actual traders to speculate on the amount of bank Brad Pitt’s next flick will bring in, but Cantor’s already experienced at this sort of thing – it owns the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a virtual exchange where you can buy fake stocks and bonds on actors and movies.

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The financial sector was turned upside down in September and economic news has been pretty awful ever since, topped off with 1970s-style unemployment numbers on Friday. These topsy turvy times have been a gold mine for crazy statistics straight out of bizarro world. In October 2007, the Royal Bank of Scotland bought ABN Amro for $100 billion. But if it had just held its money until after the financial sector meltdown, it could have bought six banks for the price of one – Citibank for $22.5 billion, Morgan Stanley for $10.5 billion, Goldman Sachs for $21 billion, Merrill Lynch for $12.3 billion, Deutsche Bank for $13 billion and Barclays for $12.7, a total of $92 billion. Luckily the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department were able to take advantage of these red-hot discount prices.