New Products On EEX Futures Market Start Trading On September 10 - Longer Trading Hours In The Futures Market

EEX European Energy Exchange starts trading 12-month futures on September 10. With the introduction of 12-month futures, EEX will be expanding its product family in the futures market, as announced, to include new products that are intensively used in the OTC (over-the-counter) market. The three-month (quarter-end) futures, which will round out the EEX product family in the futures market, will be launched as announced in the fourth quarter this year. When the new products are introduced, trading in the EEX futures market will start one hour earlier, at 9:00 a.m. instead of 10:00 a.m.

With the introduction of 12-month futures, EEX will now also be offering participants products that they can use to hedge against long-term electricity price fluctuations, in addition to the products with one-month terms. The 12-month futures have terms of one to three years and track the value of a constant delivery of baseload and peakload electricity for every day of a year.

Up to now, EEX has offered futures with terms of one to 18 months on baseload and peakload blocks in its futures market. A baseload block describes the continuous delivery of one megawatt of electricity per hour for the period from midnight to midnight the next day on any day of the week; peakload blocks cover the period from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday through Fridays.

When the 12-month futures are launched, EEX will make the trading hours in the futures market one hour longer. As of September 10, trading will begin at 9:00 a.m. Because much of the off-exchange trading in futures products takes place early in the morning, participants will be better able to integrate on- and off-exchange trading into their trading flows.