Eurex Turns Over 88.4 Million Contracts In October - Open Interest At Record High

Approximately 88.4 million contracts were traded on the international derivatives market Eurex in October. This equates to an average daily volume of approximately 4.2 million contracts. At roughly 893 million contracts, total turnover for the current year exceeds previous-year levels by around 20 million contracts or 2 percent. Furthermore, the world’s largest derivatives market recorded its highest open interest to date with open interest of 76 million contracts. The number of open positions has climbed 22 percent since October 2003.

The highest turnover in October was delivered by the Fixed Income Derivatives segment, with 45.5 million contracts, or more than half of the volume traded on Eurex. With 20.2 million contracts traded, the Euro Bund Future retained its position as the most successful product. The Euro Bobl Future accounted for 12.3 million contracts, while the traded volume of Euro Schatz Future contracts totaled 8.8 million.

42.9 million contracts for equity-based derivatives were traded in October, 24.2 million of which were attributable to equity index derivatives and 18.7 million to equity options. The strongest contract among the equity index derivatives was the future on the DJ Euro Euro-STOXX 50 index with 9.8 million contracts traded. Approximately 23 percent of trading volume in this contract comes from the USA, with another 33,5 percent from the UK, and 13 percent generated in Germany. The top-trading stock option in October was Allianz, which set a new monthly record of 3.4 million contracts (previous record: 3.1 million contracts in January 2004). Options on Münchner Rückversicherung shares also recorded a monthly record of 2.3 million contracts (previous record: 2.3 million contracts in March 2004).

Trading in options on Dutch and French stocks, especially those listed on the DJ Euro STOXX 50 index, was strong again in October. On 8 October, Eurex saw the highest-ever open interest in Dutch stock options at 3 million contracts. The total volume of October trading in Dutch stock options was around 790,000 contracts; and 7.2 million contracts have been traded since the beginning of the year, a rise of 21 percent on the same period last year. Some 182,000 French stock option contracts were traded in October. Open interest in French stock options had reached a record high of 550,000 contracts by the end of October. In the German and Italian stock option segments, open interest was also at record-high levels of 31.3 million contracts and 54,000 contracts respectively.

The electronic trading platform Eurex Bonds, which rounds out Eurex’s fixed-income product range, recorded a volume of 8.1 billion euros (single counting) in October.