The contracts, which will be traded on the NYMEX ACCESS® electronic trading platform, will begin trading at 3:15 PM, the same time they will begin trading every Monday through Thursday. They will trade until 2:30 the following day and, on Sundays, they will begin trading at 7 PM.
The contracts will be listed 12 months out and will begin with April as the spot month. Each contract will be marked to that day's settlement price for the corresponding month of the light, sweet crude oil futures contract.
These are also physically delivered contracts, with a short position held to delivery resulting in the obligation to take delivery of light, sweet crude oil in Cushing, Oklahoma, and deliver the other crude oil in the designated delivery location. A long position creates the opposite obligation.
The contracts will also be identical in size (1,000 barrels) to the light, sweet crude oil futures contract and will similarly expire on the third business day prior to the 25th calendar day. The trading symbols will be MB for Mars Blend; LS for LLS; TS for WTS; and CM for WTI Midland.
The spot month position limit is 1,000 contracts and the all month/any one month position limit is 10,000 contracts. Off-exchange outright trades in each of these crude oil trades can also be posted as exchange of futures for physicals transactions on the NYMEX ClearPortsmclearing platform.
Exchange President J. Robert Collins, Jr., said, "We are pleased to introduce these innovative instruments which are further evidence of the increasing sophistication in trading instruments used by the energy industry along with our efforts to offer a full spectrum of products to address those needs."
