CME volume on the exchange's GLOBEX® electronic trading platform has risen from more than 16 million contracts in the first quarter of 2001 to nearly 43 million in the second quarter of 2002. Today represented the third time in the last month in which more than one million CME contracts traded on the platform in a single day. During the trading surge, there were several instances of connectivity problems or erroneous reports that affected some users of the platform. We have identified the causes of the problems and either have corrected or are in the process of addressing them. The Board chose to defer Eagle's implementation date in order to devote additional resources to ensure that GLOBEX will meet customer demands for performance and reliability in this high volume environment.
"The reliability of our GLOBEX electronic trading platform is our highest priority," said CME Chairman Terry Duffy. "Given the recent record volumes and the resulting stresses to the system, it is imperative that we prioritize our efforts to first ensure the continuous performance and efficiency of the platform before attempting to expand its use with a new major application. Accordingly, we have elected to delay the Eagle Project release for a short period of time in order to provide our customers with optimal and consistent GLOBEX performance."
"We will introduce our Eagle Project in October in an environment that provides our customers not only with new functionality to execute complex transactions electronically but also the benefits of the increased resources we are devoting in the short term to our reliability, capacity and infrastructure," said CME President and Chief Executive Officer Jim McNulty."
The Eagle facility will make it possible for the first time to trade calendar spreads electronically on GLOBEX. Calendar spreads are a popular and complex trading strategy in Eurodollar futures that currently can be executed only through open outcry trading.
