The institutional trading community, including market makers, e-locals, proprietary traders and institutional end-users, were the impetus of the exchange's growth over the last few months. BTEX traded 858,096 contracts during the fourth quarter of 2002, up from 429,895 contracts during the third quarter, a 100 percent increase in volume.
In addition, the exchange traded its two millionth contract on December 3, 2002, just three days after celebrating its one-year anniversary on November 30th and only four and a half months after trading its one-millionth contract on July 22nd.
"We believe that increased customer acceptance is a major reason the exchange has experienced an exponential growth in volume during our inaugural year of operation," said Hank Mlynarski, President, BrokerTec Futures Exchange. "This coming year, we expect to continue the positive momentum and increase volume even further as we seek to become the most viable and robust platform for electronically trading U.S. Treasury bond and note futures."
