Eurex On Continuing Upward Trend In September - Again Over 35 Million Contracts Traded - Record Results In Dow-Jones Euro STOXX And SHAZ

Eurex, the European derivatives, is posting further increases in turnover: About 36 million contracts were traded in September on the world's largest derivatives market. Eurex reports an increase of 7.6 million contracts traded as compared with the number posted in September 1998. Total turnover for the first nine months of 1999 came to about 281 million contracts, about 90 million contracts more than the number traded during the first nine months of 1998 and about 33 million contracts above the total for all of 1998. The BUND future was the top Eurex product in September, with about 12.8 million contracts traded. For another month in a row, the BUND future was the world's most heavily traded derivatives contract. Trading in options on the BUND future was also extremely active again in September, beating out the number traded during the same month of last year by more than 2 million contracts, representing an increase of 112 percent.. Trading volume in futures on the BOBL and SCHATZ was high in September. The BOBL future set a new record on a monthly basis with over 5.6 million contracts traded, a 13 percent increase over the number traded in Sep-tember last year. The SCHATZ future posted its second-best monthly total with over 2.4 million contracts traded in September, a 21 percent increase over the September 1998 volume. Futures on the one-month and three-month Euribor showed slight increases again in contract volume. With 16,600 contracts traded on a daily average in September, about four thousand more contracts were traded on a daily basis in the money-market products than the average for 1999 so far. Trading in derivatives on the Dow-Jones Euro STOXX 50 index also increased. More than 1.3 million contracts in futures and options on the Euro STOXX were traded in September 1999, setting a new record on a monthly basis and beating the previous record of about 880,000 contracts set in June 1999. Compared with the month of August, turnover in the options grew by about 54 percent in September, and the volume in futures by 120 percent.