Thailand Futures Exchange (TFEX)’s New Series Of Stock Futures Well-Received On 1st Trading Day

The Thailand Futures Exchange PCL (TFEX), under The Stock Exchange of Thailand group, announced that trading volume of its 20 new underlying stocks for single stock futures gained a warm welcome from investors amid the bullish sentiment, with 2,767 contracts traded on the first day of trading, representing 3.58 percent of the overall 77,304 derivatives contracts traded.
 
TFEX Managing Director Kesara Manchusree said that the first trading day of the new series of single stock futures, on top of the currently available for a total of 50, got a good reception from investors and other participants, with trading volume of stock futures totaling 47,692 contracts from 77,304 contracts of the overall TFEX derivatives trading.   
 
“Stock futures has proven to be highly popular among investors following the stock market’s upbeat sentiment, with its average daily trading value rising to be 36,479 contracts, or up 312.23 percent from a year earlier, mainly because it can provide higher returns while requiring a lower initial investment than buying stocks directly. Increasing the number of stock futures today has greatly helped boost trading alternatives for investors and enabled them to select underlying stocks to more closely match market movements,” Kesara said.
 
The new series of underlying stocks are AAV, AMATA, AOT, BCP, BGH, BH, BJC, BLAND, CENTEL, CK, CPN, INTUCH, JAS, KK, PTTGC, ROBINS, SIRI, STEC, THCOM, and TPIPL. The contract size is 1,000 shares per contract and there are four contract months, namely maturities of March, June, September, and December.
 
On March 18, 2013, trading volume of TFEX products totaled 77,304 contracts, consisting of 47,692 in stock futures; 14,201 in SET50 Futures; 13,820 in gold futures; and 1,591 in other products. Open interest (as of March 15, 2013) was at 516,760 contracts. The top five most actively traded stock futures (in descending order) are ITD (13,648 contracts), TMB (9,325 contracts), TRUE (6,146 contracts), BTS (5,285 contracts) and LH (3,326 contracts).