EUREX Shows Further Increases in Trading Volume in February

Eurex set another new record in February with 26.3 million contracts traded, an increase of 11.5 million contracts or around 78 percent higher than the volume posted during the same month of last year. Compared with the month of January, the February total at Eurex was 2.7 million contracts higher, an increase of more than 11 percent. The long-term interest-rate products were again the most actively based contracts, with the BUND future leading the way. With about 11.05 million contracts traded in February, the BUND future achieved its second-best monthly performance to date, topped only by the September 1998 total of about 11.2 million contracts traded. Compared with February 1998, trading in the BUND was 5.9 million contracts higher, representing growth of 116 percent. The steady increase in options and futures on the EURO STOXX® 50 companies is especially notable in the index products segment. A total of 182,000 futures and 97,000 option contracts were traded in the month of February. This brought up the daily average volume traded from 900 to 4,800 contracts in the futures and from 2,700 to 9,100 in the options. Compared with the previous month, Eurex more than doubled the turnover in options on the EURO STOXX® 50, whereas the volume traded in the futures rose only slightly. The trend in three-month Euribor futures is still extremely favourable. With about 730,000 contracts traded, almost twice as many contracts have changed hands during the first two months of the year than in the four months after trading was initiated in September 1998.