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Volume on CME's GLOBEX® electronic trading platform for July totaled 29,248,873 contracts, up nearly 26 percent over last July. Year-to-date volume on GLOBEX through July stood at nearly 162.6 million contracts, up nearly 70 percent over the same period last year.
Total exchange volume in July rose nearly 1 percent compared to a strong July 2002, CME's busiest month of 2002 on an average daily volume basis. Year-to-date, CME volume of nearly 375 million contracts resulted in average daily volume of nearly 2.6 million contracts, 18 percent higher than the daily average of 2.2 million contracts traded in the first seven months of 2002.
Trading in equity and index products rose 16 percent over last July. Trading in foreign exchange products was up 42 percent, and trading in agricultural products rose 46 percent from the year-ago period. Volume in E-mini stock index contracts rose 7 percent compared to last July's very strong levels and averaged 986,000 contracts per day, despite equity market volatility levels as measured by the Chicago Board Options Exchange's VIX index, which dropped in July to 21 from 39 in July 2002. Numerous E-mini™ stock index products enjoyed their single best trading month ever, including E-mini NASDAQ-100® futures with more than 6.3 million contracts, E-mini Russell 2000® futures with 330,993 contracts, and E-mini S&P MidCap 400™ futures with 119,811 contracts. Additionally, CME's E-mini S&P 500® contract had its busiest July ever with over 14.8 million contracts. The E-mini S&P 500 is the fastest growing contract in the history of CME.
Other products setting all-time monthly volume records include 10-year swap rate futures with 9,600 contracts and milk options with 8,057 contracts. Among the products posting their highest volume of any July were Eurodollar mid-curve options with nearly 2.6 million contracts, EuroFX futures at 866,150, Canadian dollar futures at 331,345, Mexican peso futures at 225,890, Australian dollar futures at 130,510, EuroFX/British pound cross rate futures at 3,589 and milk futures at 21,472.
CME concluded the month with its single busiest trading day ever - excluding TRAKRS - with volume of more than 4.3 million contracts on July 31. Eurodollar futures alone traded more than 2 million contracts, the first time volume in any single CME product exceeded 2 million in a single day. Eurodollar trading volume remained at near record levels on Aug.1, 2003.
The July 2003 volume figures included special July 1 opening day procedures for CME's newest TRAKRS product, Commodity TRAKRS, which had volume of 5 million contracts, valued at $125 million. TRAKRS products set a record during the month, averaging approximately 243,000 contracts per day led by the Commodity TRAKRS introduction. A TRAKRS launch day includes orders that were gathered over the previous weeks. Each TRAKRS contract, for which CME receives significantly lower clearing fees of less than 1 cent per contract on average, had a notional value of $25 at launch.
July average daily volume traded via open outcry and electronic trading each totaled more than 1.3 million contracts, while 41,000 contracts per day were privately negotiated. The underlying value of total July volume was $28.6 trillion.
During the month, CME also set new open interest levels on 13 separate dates, most recently on July 31 when exchange-wide open interest surpassed 28 million for the first time. CME has the largest futures and options on futures open interest of any exchange in the world. Overall open interest has risen by 1.4 million positions since the July 1 launch of TRAKRS. Open interest is the most widely recognized indicator of the level of customer interest in an exchange's products. It represents the number of futures and options on futures contracts outstanding at the close of each trading day.
