BM&F Reduces Costs Of Dollar And Ibovespa Futures Contracts

BM&F has reduced the costs of both Ibovespa and Dollar futures contracts. For the Ibovespa contract, the exchange, registration, and permanence fees were reduced by 50%. The Dollar contract had its exchange fee cut by 10%. The measure went into effect on July 3rd, in accordance to Circular Letter 077/2005, which is available online in Portuguese (http://www.bmf.com.br/portal/portal.asp).

The reduction in trading costs was possible due to the operational surplus, attained during the year (financial results until May 31st). According to BM&F, part of the surplus is a result of the increase in trading volumes – from January to June 2006, 128,976,718 contracts were traded; a daily average of 1,048,591 traded contracts, in comparison to 737,041 contracts traded during the first six months of 2005, a 42.27% growth.