Bursa Malaysia Transfers To Its New Derivatives Trading Platform

Bursa Malaysia migrated its derivatives products onto its new common trading system, Bursa Trade yesterday. The transfer is the first phase of the new trading platform implementation and marks a first major step for Bursa Malaysia in creating an integrated system for its derivatives and equities market.

Yusli Mohamed Yusoff, Chief Executive Officer of Bursa Malaysia Berhad said, "Bursa Trade will enable faster processing and execution of more orders. It enhances capabilities for the exchange to improve market liquidity and velocity as well as increase trading efficiency and quality of market surveillance."

Trading on the new system began smoothly with the exception of some issues that surfaced in the later part of this morning's trading session.

Yusli explained, "We were fully prepared to encounter some teething problems during the first few days of Bursa Trade's implementation. More importantly however, trading activities today remained uninterrupted."

On a separate note, Yusli also commented on the performance of FCPO prices which hit limit up for all contract months today with the exception of the spot month and November 2007 contracts.

"Prices of soft oils are generally inter-related. Prices of soybean oil futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange hit limit up whereas prices on Project A (Chicago Board Of Trade) also rose. This had a knock-on effect on the domestic crude palm oil futures contract."

FCPO volume for the day totaled 16,242 contracts.