Interest rate products again surged to new open interest highs, with Friday's 12,752,724 positions surpassing the previous record of 12,726,389 positions set August 23. Interest rate options on futures and Eurodollar options on futures reached record levels of 7,924,978 positions and 7,923,541 positions, respectively. The previous records had been set on Thursday, August 23, at 7,848,485 interest rate options and 7,847,046 Eurodollar options.
Open interest is the number of futures and options contracts outstanding at the close of trading each day. CME also has the largest futures and options on futures open interest of any exchange in the world, with 12.2 million contracts open as of June 30, 2001. Eurodollar options were launched in 1985. Also traded in the interest rate complex are contracts based on One-Month LIBOR, Euroyen and Treasury bills.
Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (www.cme.com) is an international marketplace that brings together buyers and sellers on its trading floors and GLOBEX®2 around-the-clock electronic trading system. CME offers futures contracts and options on futures primarily in four product areas: interest rates, stock indexes, foreign exchange and commodities. On Nov. 13, 2000, CME finalized its transformation into a for-profit, shareholder-owned corporation as it became the first U.S. financial exchange to demutualize by converting its membership interests into shares of common stock that can trade separately from exchange trading privileges. The exchange moves about $1.5 billion per day in settlement payments and manages $28.4 billion in collateral deposits.
