Wheat futures open interest also showed marked gains in the past month at 73,768 contracts. Open interest at the end of May was 30.8 percent higher than last year at this time and 25 percent higher than at the end of April.
Hard red winter wheat options trading volume was fairly active, posting gains over last month and May 2004. Wheat options volume for May was .9 percent higher than May 2004 and 2.1 percent higher than last month. Open interest in the wheat options contract increased 29.3 percent in the last month.
Total exchange volume for the month of May weighed in at 252,104 contracts, posting a 7.2 percent increase over the May 2004 volume of 235,076 contracts.
Year-to-date volume for the wheat futures contract is running 10.0 percent ahead of last year’s figure at this time. Total exchange volume is running 6.2 percent ahead of last year at this time.
The Kansas City Board of Trade, chartered in 1876, is the world's largest futures market for hard red winter wheat.
Open interest measures the number of open trading positions in a market. Each KCBT® wheat futures contract represents 5,000 bushels of wheat.
