CME average daily volume totalled 2.17 million contracts in January 2003, compared to 2.11 million contracts in January 2002. Excluding its lower-priced TRAKRSSM products, total volume was 2.14 million contracts in January 2003. On GLOBEX, January average daily volume totaled more than 1 million contracts, compared to 468,298 in January 2002. Electronically traded volume represented 47 percent of total volume in January 2003.
"Trading volume is off to a strong start for 2003," said CME Chairman Terry Duffy. "Our E-mini™ stock index futures continue to make impressive volume gains, and both foreign exchange and commodity volume posted double-digit growth. Though interest rate volume is less than year-ago levels, it has rebounded nearly 40 percent from December volume levels."
"CME's Eagle Project, which permits implied electronic calendar spread trading of Eurodollars on its GLOBEX electronic trading platform, completed its first week of operations on January 31," said Jim McNulty, CME President and Chief Executive Officer. "While we've worked our way through a couple of unexpected issues, we have already seen trading during Asian and European trading hours and activity in all 22 of the implied spread combinations that are possible with Eagle."
The notional value, or underlying dollar value of transactions on CME in January represented $22.2 trillion in asset allocation and risk management activity. Average daily notional value totaled $1.1 trillion.
Among product groups, stock index product volume grew more than 100 percent in January compared to January 2002 levels, with average daily volume of more than 1 million contracts. Stock index trading volume set a January record of more than 22 million contracts. Foreign exchange product volume rose 24 percent, averaging 101,028 contracts per day. Commodity product volume increased 20 percent, averaging 36,106 contracts daily. While interest rate product volume declined 34 percent compared to January 2002, January 2003 average daily volume of 980,424 was 40 percent higher than December 2002 levels.
Among products setting new all-time monthly volume records were E-mini Russell 2000 futures at 166,646, E-mini S&P MidCap 400 futures at 86,674 and milk futures at 22,284. New records for any January were set in E-mini S&P 500 futures at 13.6 million, E-mini NASDAQ-100 futures at 5.2 million, Euro FX futures at 610,612, Euro FX options at 104,952 and Canadian dollar futures at 270,811.
Open interest on CME stood at 21.1 million positions on Jan. 30, up 27 percent from 16.7 million positions at the end of January 2002. Open interest represents the number of futures and options on futures contracts outstanding at the close of trading each day.
Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (www.cme.com) is the largest futures exchange in the United States and the second largest exchange in the world for the trading of futures and options on futures. As an international marketplace, CME brings together buyers and sellers on its trading floors and GLOBEX® around-the-clock 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 moves an average of about $1.8 billion per day in settlement payments and manages $27.4 billion in collateral deposits. On Dec. 6, 2002, Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CME) and its CME subsidiary became the first publicly traded U.S. financial exchange.
GLOBEX is a registered trademark of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. E-mini is a trademark of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. "TRAKRS" and "Total Return Asset Contracts" are service marks of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. TRAKRS are patent pending. S&P, S&P MidCap 400, NASDAQ-100, Russell 2000 and other trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks that are not proprietary to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. are the property of their respective owners, and are used herein under license.
