August was the second busiest month in CME history for CME's GLOBEXÒ electronic trading platform, as 17,524,573 contracts changed hands, an increase of 154 percent over August 2001. The busiest volume month was July 2002 when 23.3 million contracts changed hands via GLOBEX. Average daily volume on GLOBEX in August totaled 796,572 contracts. GLOBEX volume of 113,929,244 year-to-date surpasses previous year levels by 132 percent.
August records were set in CME's interest rate products at 27.4 million contracts, up 17 percent from year-ago levels, and in stock index products at 18.7 million contracts, up121 percent versus August 2001.
Eurodollar futures set an August record of 17.8 million contracts. An August record of 9.5 million options on Eurodollar futures also changed hands. Futures on the euro currency, Euro FX, set an August record of 525,538 contracts.
Among stock index products, E-mini™ S&P MidCap 400 futures set an all-time monthly volume record of 34,394 contracts. E-mini S&P 500 futures set an August record of 11.2 million contracts, an increase of 222 percent over the previous year, as did E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures at 4.2 million contracts, up 65 percent.
For the month of August, average daily volume on CME totaled 2.2 million contracts, with year-to-date volume also averaging 2.2 million contracts. Average daily volume in August 2001 was 1.5 million contracts and totaled 1.5 million contracts for the period January-August 2001. Month-end open interest stood at 19.7 million positions, an increase of 29 percent from one year ago. On August 14, CME open interest surpassed 20 million, with 20,128,904 open positions on the exchange.
Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (www.cme.com) is the largest futures exchange in the United States and the second largest exchange in the world for the trading of futures and options on futures. As an international marketplace, CME brings together buyers and sellers on its trading floors and GLOBEX around-the-clock electronic trading platform. CME offers futures contracts and options on futures primarily in four product areas: interest rates, stock indexes, foreign exchange and commodities. The exchange moves about $1.5 billion per day in settlement payments and manages $27.1 billion in collateral deposits. CME is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc.
