LIFFE Trading Volume For May 2000 Shows A 35 Percent Rise Over Previous Year

The London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) traded an average daily nominal value of £277 billion (?418 billion) and a total nominal value of £6,095 billion (?9,203 billion) during May 2000. This represents a rise in total value of 54% over May last year and is up 50% on last month.

The Exchange's overall trading volume for May 2000 of 12,577,181 contracts is up 42% over last month and up 35% on May 1999.

LIFFE's Chief Executive, Hugh Freedberg said, "It is encouraging to see a significant increase in trading volume now that we have completed the migration of all the Exchange's financial contracts on to LIFFE's electronic trading system, LIFFE CONNECT™. The rapid take-up of the system worldwide continues apace with traders in Tokyo now accessing LIFFE CONNECT™ direct. More business by value is entrusted to our technology than to that of any other electronic exchange in the world."

LIFFE's flagship Three-Month Euribor futures contract has posted a 155% increase in volume over year-ago levels, trading 5,710,498 contracts in May 2000.

The following records were set in May:

LIFFE's Equity Options set a new daily record trading 53,232 contracts on 9 May (previous daily record of 49,889 set on 25 May 1999)

MSCI Pan-Euro Index future set a new daily record trading 6,017 contracts on 15 May (previous daily record of 4,695 set on 3 March 2000)

White Sugar option set a new daily record of 5,790 contracts on 25 May (previous daily record set on 12 May 1998). MSCI Pan Euro Index Future set a new daily open interest record of 8,358 on 16 May (previous daily record of 8,211 set on 15 May 2000)

White Sugar set a new daily open interest record of 19,029 on 30 May (previous daily record of 18,989 set on 26 May 2000)