The near-record level is 26.4% higher than for the same month last year and is surpassed only by the turnover in June 1998 when 4.4 million futures and options contracts were traded.
An average of 178,571 futures and options contracts exchanged hands each day, amounting to a nominal value for the month of more than A$1,072 billion.
Year to date volume exceeds 9 million trades, up 23.3% on January to March 1999.
The growth in trading during March 2000 was led by SFE's four main contracts: 3-Year Bond futures up 43% on March 1999 figures to 1,707,230 contracts; 10-Year Bond futures up 35% to 904,408; 90-Day Bank Bill futures up 9% to 727,381; SPI® futures up 8% to 491,242.
A number of individual trading records were set during the month, including: busiest trading day of the year - 338,421 contracts (worth $81.37 billion) on 15 March; all-time daily trading record for SPI® futures - 46,986 contracts on 29 March; new monthly volume record for SPI® options - 185,943 contracts traded.
March's high turnover was stimulated by equity market volatility, uncertainty over interest rates and the rollover of many SFE contracts from the March quarter into June quarter.
The continuing high trading volume is also a reflection of the capacity and reliability of SFE's electronic trading platform, SYCOM®.
