"The new E-mini NASDAQ Composite Index futures contract provides a significant tool for equity market risk management and price discovery for a wide variety of asset and other financial managers," said John L. Jacobs, CEO of NASDAQ Financial Products.
"We are pleased to be expanding our range of products based on NASDAQ's benchmark indexes," said CME Chairman Terry Duffy. "NASDAQ and CME have long been pioneers in their respective markets and this new contract represents our mutual commitment to further innovation."
"E-mini NASDAQ Composite Index futures will further expand CME's diverse array of popular electronically traded equity index contracts. Since its launch in 1999, the E-mini NASDAQ-100 contract has been one of our most popular products, posting compounded annual volume growth of 171 percent," said Craig Donohue, who will become CME's CEO on Jan.1, 2004. "The significant growth in our E-mini stock index futures contract has boosted average daily electronic trading levels to over 1.2 million contracts per day in the third quarter and electronic trading now accounts for fully 45 percent of CME volume."
CME E-mini NASDAQ Composite Index futures will be sized at $20 times the NASDAQ Composite Index, or approximately $38,000 at current index levels, and will have a tick size of 0.50 index points or $10.00. The index will trade on CME's GLOBEX platform Monday through Thursday from 3:30 p.m. (Central time) to 4:30 p.m. and from 5:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. the following day, and on Sunday from 5:30 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. the following day.
The NASDAQ Composite Index is a market capitalization-weighted index of all the common stocks listed on the NASDAQ and is the broadest, most well-diversified real-time representation of the performance of NASDAQ-listed companies. The NASDAQ-100 Index is a modified capitalization-weighted index of the 100 largest non-financial stocks traded on NASDAQ. Investors may choose to spread between the two products, for example, in order to increase or reduce exposure to the large-cap stocks that predominate in the NASDAQ-100, or to capture spread opportunities between the two indexes.
NASDAQ is the world's largest electronic stock market. With approximately 3,400 companies, it lists more companies and, on average, trades more shares per day than any other U.S. market. It is home to category-defining companies that are leaders across all areas of business including technology, retail, communications, financial services, media and biotechnology. For more information about NASDAQ, visit the NASDAQ Web site at www.NASDAQ.com or the NASDAQ NewsroomSM at www.NASDAQnews.com.
As an international marketplace, Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (www.cme.com) brings together buyers and sellers on its trading floors and GLOBEX electronic trading platform. CME offers futures and options on futures primarily in four product areas: interest rates, stock indexes, foreign exchange and commodities. The exchange moved about $1.5 billion per day in settlement payments in the first nine months of 2003 and managed $29.6 billion in collateral deposits at Sept. 30, 2003. CME is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CME), which is part of the Russell 1000® Index.
