Trading across ten counters was evenly spread with most of the trading interest concentrated on spot month contracts. Of the ten SSFs introduced today, Bursa SSF was most actively traded followed by SSFs on AirAsia and AMMB.
“We are very encouraged by the initial market response to the Single Stock Futures. Being a new product, we expect it will take some time for this product segment to gather momentum, but today’s volumes are indeed a positive start,” said Yusli Mohamed Yusoff, CEO of Bursa Malaysia Berhad.
He added, “We are very excited with the prospects of SSF and the derivatives market. We believe that it will become an increasingly important growth segment of our business. As more fund-managers adopt a proactive risk management culture, coupled with the increasing sophistication of our retail clients, this would boost the growth of use of derivatives as hedging and investment tools. We are targeting a daily average of 2000 contracts in the medium-term”.
To encourage market uptake of SSFs Bursa Malaysia will be granting a 3 month exchange and clearing fee holiday. In addition, price feed subscription for all SSFs will be waived for 1 year from launch date.
Steven Lai, GM of OSK Futures and Options, and President of the Malaysia Futures Brokers Association said that the introduction of SSFs and other new derivatives products will expand the breadth of price risk management and investment products available in Malaysia, bringing new clients to the derivatives market.
Bursa Malaysia recorded a record daily trading volume for its futures products of 30,078 contracts on Wednesday, 26/04/06 which supersedes the previous record high of 27,314 contracts recorded late last month on 28/03/2006.
Click here for SSFs Trading Summary for 28/04/06
