CME To List Seven New Weather Contracts In Cities In The United States And Europe - Exchange Continues To Build On The Success Of Its Innovation In Weather Derivatives

CME, the largest U.S. futures exchange, today announced it will expand its innovative weather futures and options product lines with seven new contracts, three in the United States and four in Europe, which are scheduled to launch on Monday, June 20 (Sunday night, June 19 on CME® Globex®). The three U.S. cities include Baltimore, Detroit and Salt Lake City and the four European cities include Barcelona, Essen, Madrid and Rome. CME currently lists weather futures and options on futures contracts based on aggregate temperatures for 22 cities, including 15 in the U.S., five in Europe and two in Japan.

“Weather is one of the largest variables impacting economic activity and corporate performance across many industries,” said Rick Redding, Managing Director, Products and Services for CME.. “CME weather futures contracts provide the marketplace with important hedging tools that allow businesses worldwide to manage something that has always seemed unmanageable. If organizations today are not hedging the weather they are speculating.”

The new U.S. listings will include Heating Degree Day (HDD) and Cooling Degree Day (CDD) on both Monthly and Seasonal futures and options and the new European listings will include Heating Degree Day (HDD) and Cumulative Average Temperature (CAT) on both Monthly and Seasonal futures and options. Product specifications are identical to the existing U.S. and European Cities. Cities in U.S. will be priced in U.S. dollars and cities in Europe will be priced in British Pounds.

The futures contracts will trade only on the exchange’s electronic trading platform from 5 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. Chicago time the following day. Trading on all of the contracts will terminate at 9 a.m. Chicago time on the first Exchange business day that is at least two calendar days after the last calendar day of the respective contract period. Options on all CME weather futures will be traded on CME’s trading floor from 8:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Chicago time.

On April 13, 2005, CME announced that year-to-date trading of futures and options on futures in its weather derivative contracts already surpassed the total volume of contracts traded in 2004. CME Weather traded in 2005 has now reached a total of 307,000 contracts as of the close of trading on Monday, June 13, 2005, compared with 123,000 in 2004. In May 2005, CME for the first time surpassed 100,000 weather contracts traded in a single month.

For more information on trading weather futures at CME, visit the exchange’s Website at www.cme.com/edu/comwea/tradingwea/.