Mercado a Termino de Buenos Aires is a leading agricultural futures and options exchange. More than 80 member-stockholders trade different products at MATba by open auction and electronically. MATba registers, guarantees, clears and settles every contract traded through the Exchange. Its role is to provide a transparent and liquid contract market for its member-stockholders and customers to use for price discovery, risk management and investment purposes.
MATba was founded on October 17th , 1907. It was the first market to establish in Latin America and it rapidly became one of the main grain markets in the world. During the following decades, Argentina’s economic measures led to a decline in the volume of transactions. In the 90’s, with a booming economy, MATba got authorization to settle all transactions in US dollars and introduced the electronic trading system. In the past few years, MATba made strategic alliances with organizations, and state and private universities to train and thus promote a better understanding of derivatives markets. Products in Matba are traded via open outcry and electronically. Traded products include soybean, wheat, corn, sunflower and, since 2007, soybean oil and ICA MATba (Argentine Commodities Index). The latter is an index that comprises the market value of a portfolio selected according to the product’s market share of the total MATba transactions.
