Tomorrow will mark the 20th anniversary of the IBEX 35® Futures Contract, which was created on 14 January 1992. During this period, the contract has consolidated its contribution to the development of the Spanish stock market as an element of dynamism and modernisation in the financial market.
The IBEX 35® index has been closely linked to the derivatives market since its birth, acting as the underlying asset for futures and options contracts traded on MEFF, as it usually happens in organised derivatives markets.
This index has since become a reference for futures and options as well as other products. Since its creation, its calculation and dissemination have been carried out based on a high technical level, using the Spanish stock exchange’s securities representation criteria. Through this, the overall market’s performance and trends can be perfectly reflected, in particular its liquidity and trading patterns, as is common practice with other stock exchange indices.
All this makes the IBEX 35® a highly trackable index, whose performance can be followed easily as it is continuously updated, in real time, and is disseminated through very diverse channels.
The IBEX 35® Futures Contract started with a multiplier of 100 pesetas (the old Spanish currency), when the index level was around 3,000 points, whereby the contract’s notional value was around 300,000 pesetas, although its size varied as it changed from 100 to 1,000 pesetas in January 1997, which had a positive effect on trading volumes, and as a consequence of the introduction of the euro, in January 1999, the contract size was again increased to a round multiplier of 10 Euros.
Later on, as the value of the index grew, the futures contract’s notional value reached such high values that a reduced version of the contract was launched in 2011, called “Mini”, which shares the features of the bigger contract but whose multiplier is 1 Euro.
The creation of the IBEX 35® Futures provided market agents with a new range of investment opportunities.
