CME has scheduled a launch date of Monday, Sept. 23, at 8:30 a.m. (Central time) for the SPCTR indexes. The contracts will trade on CME's GLOBEX® electronic trading platform.
"SPCTRs will provide additional ways to manage risk related to equity markets," said CME Chairman Terry Duffy, "and will complement the range of Standard & Poor's index contracts already offered on CME, including our futures on the benchmark S&P 500 index, trading on CME for two decades."
"Customers will be able to remove the risk of particular sectors from their overall market exposure or increase their exposure to individual sectors by trading CME's new SPCTR indexes," said CME President & Chief Executive Officer Jim McNulty. "These and other strategies can make the Technology, Financial and Energy SPCTRs useful to customers seeking more ways to fine-tune their market positions."
The S&P 500 sector indexes are subsets of the benchmark S&P 500 Stock Price Index, which has traded on CME since 1982. Each contract will be sized at $125 times the respective index price, making the contracts' sizes comparable to CME's popular
E-mini futures contracts, which were introduced beginning in 1997 and became the fastest growing product in the history of the exchange.
The indexes are capitalization-weighted, with Technology representing 90 companies classified as part of either the Information Technology or Telecommunication Services sectors of the S&P 500, while the Financial Sector Index is composed of 80 equities and the Energy Sector Index is composed of 24 equities.
The 10 sector indexes of the S&P 500 include Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, Energy, Financials, Health Care, Industrials, Information Technology, Materials, Telecommunication Services and Utilities. CME and Standard & Poor's announced plans for the first futures contracts on the S&P 500 sectors on April 22 in conjunction with ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of trading in S&P 500 index futures. CME will name additional sectors for trading in the future.
Regular trading hours on GLOBEX will be from 3:45 p.m. Monday through Thursday (5:30 p.m. on Sundays and holidays) until 3:15 p.m. the following day. (All times are Central time.) The minimum tick size will be 0.10 index points equal to $12.50.
The new S&P 500 Sectors futures contracts will follow the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS), developed jointly by Standard & Poor's and Morgan Stanley Capital International.
Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (www.cme.com) is the largest futures exchange in the United States and the second largest exchange in the world for the trading of futures and options on futures. As an international marketplace, CME brings together buyers and sellers on its trading floors and virtually around the clock on its GLOBEX electronic trading platform. CME offers futures contracts and options on futures primarily in four product areas: interest rates, stock indexes, foreign exchange and commodities. The exchange moves about $1.5 billion per day in settlement payments and manages $27.1 billion in collateral deposits. CME is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc.
Statements in this news release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements. More detailed information about factors that may affect our performance may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, which can be obtained at its Web site at www.sec.gov. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
GLOBEX and SPCTR are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. E-mini is a service mark of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. S&P, S&P 500 and other trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks that are not proprietary to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. are the property of their respective owners, and are used herein under license.
