Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM) announced today that August 2011 trading volume averaged 175,068 contracts per day, up 53.9% from July 2011. This significant increase was led by the Gold contract, TOCOM’s most traded product, which increased 77.2% to an average of 112,222 contracts per day. The Gold Mini contract increased by 89.2% to and average of 20,631 contracts per day. There were also large increases in average daily volume for Platinum (up 23.9% to 12,914 contracts) and Crude Oil (up 19.1% to 5,393 contracts).
The volume increase for gold futures is attributed to renewed investor interest in gold following continued influx of money from other asset classes. This is in light of sovereign debt issues and consequent financial unrest in Europe and the United States. The price of gold futures in the TOCOM market, as well as in the New York market, repeatedly hit record highs, which brought heightened wide media and public attention. As for Platinum and Crude Oil contracts, concerns for the slowdown in the U.S. economy caused significant drop in the prices at the beginning of August. As the prices trended recovery toward the end of the month,volatility increased and invited active trading.
End of August open interest in all listed commodities totaled 328,609 contracts, a decrease of 44,464 contracts from the end of July 2011.
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