New average daily volume and monthly volume records in the light sweet crude contracts, ICE Brent Crude futures and ICE WTI Crude futures, helped lead ICE Futures to the new monthly exchange-wide volume records.
For the second quarter ending June 30, 2006, ADV for ICE Futures rose 113.2% to 333,668 compared to ADV of 156,481 in the second quarter of 2005, marking the exchange’s highest volume quarter to date. Also in the second quarter, average daily commissions for ICE’s OTC segment increased to $526,824, representing a rise of 79.6% over average daily commissions in the second quarter of 2005.
OTC Business Segment
In ICE’s OTC business segment, average daily commissions reflect daily trading activity in the company’s electronic OTC markets. In June 2006, ICE’s average daily commissions increased 49.6% to $507,647 from $339,446 in June 2005. The growth in average daily commissions was driven by increased trading in ICE’s cleared OTC contracts following the introduction of new cleared contracts during the first half of 2006.
Cleared OTC contract volume in the second quarter totaled 24.1 million contracts, an increase of 129.2% compared to the second quarter of 2005. Cleared contract volume in the first quarter of 2006 was 15.8 million contracts.
OTC Segment: June Average Daily Commissions
June 2006
|
June 2005
|
% Change
|
|
ICE OTC Average Daily Commissions |
$507,647
|
$339,446
|
49.6%
|
Futures Business Segment
At ICE Futures, ADV in June 2006 increased 104.5% to 353,058 contracts compared to ADV of 172,665 contracts in June 2005. June was the sixth consecutive month record ADV was achieved at ICE Futures, surpassing the May 2006 ADV record of 338,792 contracts. Total monthly futures volume rose 104.5% to a record 7,767,267 contracts, compared to total monthly volume of 3,798,639 contracts in June 2005. The previous monthly record was 7,453,433 contracts in May 2006.
ADV and monthly volume for ICE Brent Crude Futures each established new records and represented a 31.9 increase over June 2005, with ADV of 170,191 contracts and monthly volume of 3,744,193.
The ICE WTI Crude futures contract established a monthly volume record in June of 2,546,974 contracts, an increase of 2.6% over the previous monthly volume record set in May. The contract has achieved consecutive monthly volume records since its February 3 launch. The ICE WTI Crude futures contract established a new ADV record of 115,772 contracts in June.
Volume in ICE Gas Oil futures in June increased 52.6% compared to June 2005, with 1,382,097 contracts traded.
At June 30, 2006, total open interest in ICE Futures contracts stood at 996,846 contracts, with open interest in the ICE Brent Crude futures contract at 455,114 contracts. This compares to total open interest of 627,890 contracts and Brent open interest of 355,842 at June 30, 2005.
Futures Segment: June Volume Statistics
Contract |
Total Volume
June 2006
|
Total Volume
June 2005
|
Volume
% Change
|
ADV
June
2006
|
ADV
June
2005
|
ADV
% Change
|
IPE Brent Crude futures | 3,744,193 | 2,839,339 | 31.9% | 170,191 | 129,061 | 31.9% |
IPE GasOil futures | 1,382,097 | 905,805 | 52.6% | 62,823 | 41,173 | 52.6% |
ICE WTI Crude futures | 2,546,974 | n/a | -- | 115,772 | n/a | -- |
Other contracts* | 94,003 | 53,495 | 75.7% | 4,272 | 2,431 | 75.7% |
Total ICE Futures | 7,767,267 | 3,798,639 | 104.5% | 353,058 | 172,665 | 104.5% |
* “Other contracts” include ICE Heating Oil Futures, ICE Unleaded Gasoline Blendstock (RBOB) Futures, ICE UK Natural Gas Futures, ICE-ECX CFI Futures, ICE UK Electricity Futures and ICE Brent Options and ICE Gas Oil Options. The ICE-ECX CFI Futures contract is the result of a cooperative relationship between ICE Futures and the Chicago Climate Exchange, Inc. and its subsidiary, the European Climate Exchange. ICE Futures shares in the revenue derived from the ECX CFI Futures contract.
Additional June Highlights:
- For the month of June, ICE Futures averaged greater than 50% market share in volume of light sweet crude traded as futures, which is the first time ICE Futures’ light sweet crude volume has exceeded that of all other exchanges.
- In June, ICE launched 10 new refined oil products in its cleared OTC markets, with 44 new cleared OTC contracts in natural gas and power introduced since March 2006.
- ICE also announced in June that it will list an additional 13 cleared OTC natural gas and power contracts beginning July 7, bringing the total new contracts listed since March to 57 new cleared OTC contracts.
- ICE Futures announced that two new coal futures contracts will be listed beginning July 17.
- ICE announced in June the results of a year-long technology development effort to enhance the performance of its electronic trading platform. The effort included a 1700% improvement in processing speed in one year, with roundtrip transaction times of 31 milliseconds. During the initiative, ICE implemented new matching engines for the trading of futures and cleared OTC contracts, re-architected its internal messaging systems, upgraded matching-engine servers and tuned each component of the platform to maximize efficiency in execution and processing. ICE also improved its APIs to reduce customer bandwidth requirements, upgraded its network hardware, and re-engineered its network.
Additional historical futures volume and OTC commission data can be found at: https://www.theice.com/marketdata/recordsAndVolumes/volumes2006.jsp
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995
Statements in this press release regarding IntercontinentalExchange's business that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in the Company's Registration Statement on Form S-1 (Reg. No. 333-123500), as amended, as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.