"CME's volume last month represented our best August ever, despite the spillover effect from the power outage that spread over much of the Northeast and Midwest and diminished trading volume on all equity exchanges, which typically occurs in August," said CME Chairman Terry Duffy. "Year-to-date, our volume continues to outpace last year's by 16 percent as we move into September contract rollovers, and we closed out last month with our open interest at a global record of nearly 29 million positions."
"Foreign exchange (FX) trading showed particularly strong growth for August, with FX trading up 51 percent over year-ago levels," said CME President and CEO Jim McNulty. "In addition, electronic FX trading averaged nearly 57,000 contracts daily in August, increasing 81 percent over August 2002 levels."
"Electronic trading of interest rates on GLOBEX® reached more than 51,000 contracts per day last month, compared to about 32,000 in the first quarter of 2003 - the highest percentage of total interest rate contracts, at 4 percent, since we launched the Eagle project in January to facilitate electronic trading of Eurodollars," said Craig Donohue, Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer. "Today, we implement our fee reductions from $0.25 to $0.10 per side for members, clearing member firms and their affiliates in Eurodollars, to be complemented in coming weeks by the after-hours market maker program designed to encourage further participation in our flagship interest rate contract."
For August, volume on CME's GLOBEX electronic trading platform averaged 928,000 contracts per day, up 17 percent over August 2002. Year-to-date volume on GLOBEX stood at 182 million contracts, up nearly 60 percent over the same period last year. Year-to-date, electronic trading represents 43 percent of CME total volume.
Trading in FX products averaged nearly 113,000 contracts daily in August 2003, compared to 75,000 in August 2002. Interest rate product volume grew 4 percent in August 2003 over August 2002 levels, with an average of 1.3 million contracts changing hands daily, compared to a daily average of 1.2 million contracts in August 2002.
Average daily volume in equity and index products rose 6 percent over last August, to more than 900,000 contracts a day, with E-miniTM stock index contract volume increasing by 8 percent to 764,000 contracts a day. Total volume in equity and interest products set a record for any August, with more than 18.9 million contracts traded.
Various CME products set trading records for any August, including Eurodollar futures, with 18.7 million contracts traded; E-mini NASDAQ-100® futures, with 4.8 million contracts traded; and Euro FX futures, with more than 824,000 contracts traded.
The underlying value of CME's August volume represented $28.5 trillion. Open interest, the number of contracts outstanding at the close of trading, stood at nearly 29 million positions on Aug. 29 - a global record for futures and futures options. Open interest is a widely recognized indicator of the level of customer interest in an exchange's products. It represents the number of futures and options on futures contracts outstanding at the close of trading each day.
Click here to see the Monthly Volume Reports.
Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (www.cme.com) is the largest futures exchange in the United States. As an international marketplace, CME 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 half of 2003 and managed $29.1 billion in collateral deposits at June 30, 2003. CME is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CME), which is part of the Russell 1000® Index.
