“We are pleased with the progress made so far,” commented Mr Peter Hiom, SFE’s General Manager of Business Development. “In particular the new Intra-Day Options launched at the end of April have outperformed our expectations. With each new product and service enhancement, we are seeing increasing interest in the SFE Options market.”
The Intra-Day Option, a single session option that is valid only for the duration of the session in which it is traded, was launched on April 31st and has traded an average of 2,489 contracts per day, totalling over 70,000 contracts in May. These volumes combined with the quarterly and serial options on the Bank Bill, 3 and 10 Year Bond Futures have resulted in a 17.6% improvement over the same period in 2001. (Jan-May 2001 compared to Jan-May 2002) “The volumes in our options products should continue to improve,” added Mr Hiom “with the introduction of new technologies to support our market makers and the product and trading rule changes to be implemented soon.”
Currently two leading market makers, Timber Hill and Optiver, provide prices on the equity option products traded on SFE. These are to be joined by market makers in Interest Rate products later this month, to coincide with the expected rule changes and product enhancements.
