The Tokyo Commodity Exchange announced today that average daily trading volume for February 2015 was 95,790 contracts, down 12.1% from January 2015. On a year-on-year basis, it increased by 7.0%. Crude Oil saw a significant increase in volume: up 43.7 % to 12,192 contracts. But others decreased; Gold, the Exchange’s most active commodity, was down 25.3% to 34,627 contracts and Platinum was down 12.1% to 15,189 contracts. These contracts pushed down overall volume.
The primary reason behind the large increase in Crude Oil volume was active trading in an ETN called “NEXT NOTES: Nikkei-TOCOM Crude Oil Double Bull ETN”, which was created by Nomura Securities using the Nikkei-TOCOM Leveraged Crude Oil Index. The more this financial product sells, the more the issuer hedges against TOCOM Crude Oil futures. Crude Oil daily volume for February 5, 2015, at 21,177 contracts, was the highest since October 29, 2004 (21,406 contracts). Crude Oil (12,192 contracts) average daily volume topped Gasoline (11,598 contracts) for the first time since the listing of the Crude Oil future in 2001.
Open interest at the end of February 2015 was 318,903 contracts, an increase of 26,074 contracts (9.3%) from the end of January 2015.
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