Year to date, CME's volume has risen 30 percent from 92.7 million contracts in the first quarter of 2001. Average daily volume was 2.1 million contracts in March and 2.0 million contracts year-to-date, compared with an average of 1.6 million contracts in March 2001. Underlying value of the contracts traded in the first quarter of this year reached $86.4 trillion, up from $66.4 trillion in the first quarter of 2001.
Volume on CME's GLOBEX® electronic trading platform also set records for the quarter and month. First quarter GLOBEX volume rose 88 percent to 30.5 million contracts, versus 16.2 million for the first quarter of 2001. In March 2002, GLOBEX volume totaled a record 10.5 million contracts, an increase of 59 percent from 6.6 million contracts in the same month a year ago.
The interest rate product category had its best March ever. A total of 25.7 million contracts changed hands last month, an increase of 22 percent from March 2001. Eurodollar futures, CME's benchmark interest rate product and the world's most actively traded futures contract, posted a March record of nearly 18 million contracts, an increase of 16 percent from 15.5 million a year ago. Eurodollar options on futures rose to a record 7.6 million, up 17 percent from 5.3 million in March 2001.
Equity index products achieved an all-time monthly volume record of 12.6 million contracts in March 2002, an increase of 25 percent from the same month a year ago. All-time monthly records were set by the E-mini S&P 500 Index futures at 5.6 million contracts and E-mini Russell 2000 futures at 18,905 contracts. E-mini Nasdaq-100 Index futures and Russell 2000 futures each posted their best March ever, with 3.7 million contracts and 103,026 contracts, respectively.
Foreign exchange futures set all-time monthly volume records in EuroFX and Australian dollar futures, with 634,147 and 122,691 contracts, respectively. Canadian dollar futures set a record for any March with 338,303 contracts. EuroFX options reached a March record of 56,899 contracts.
Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (www.cme.com) is the largest futures exchange in the United States. 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 contracts and options on futures primarily in four product areas: interest rates, stock indexes, foreign exchange and commodities. The exchange moves about $1.5 billion per day in settlement payments and manages $28.2 billion in collateral deposits. CME is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc.
