CME Group, the world's largest and most diverse derivatives exchange, today announced that options on futures contracts for corn, wheat, soybeans, soybean meal, soybean oil, rough rice and oats will be available for electronic trading on the CME Globex(R) platform during day-time open outcry trading hours beginning April 14, 2008.
Electronically traded options on futures for the agricultural products will trade from 9:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. Chicago time Monday through Friday side-by-side with floor trading of options on futures and will continue to trade 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday through Friday on CME Globex. Market Makers will be in place to make continuous two-sided markets and to handle request for quotes (RFQs) beginning April 14.
"Expanding the trading hours for electronically traded grain and oilseed options will allow for greater access to our products during times of the greatest volume and liquidity," said Rick Redding, Managing Director, CME Group Products and Services. "The distribution on CME Globex will enable customers around the world more trading opportunities to use our products for price discovery, risk management and other portfolio management needs."
Year-to-date, more than 835,000 grains and oilseeds contracts trade a day, a 30 percent increase over 2007 levels. Of that, options on agricultural futures trade almost 165,000 contracts a day, a 44 percent increase over the previous year. For more information, please go to http://www.cmegroup.com/sbsoptions.
CME Group (http://www.cmegroup.com) is the world's largest and most diverse exchange. Formed by the 2007 merger of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), CME Group serves the risk management needs of customers around the globe. As an international marketplace, CME Group brings buyers and sellers together on the CME Globex electronic trading platform and on its trading floors. CME Group offers the widest range of benchmark products available across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, agricultural commodities, and alternative investment products such as weather and real estate. CME Group is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ under the symbol "CME."