“This has been an extraordinary year for Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.,” said Chairman Scott Gordon. “We exceeded our previous annual volume record with six trading days remaining. This also is the year CME became a for-profit, shareholder-owned corporation, with the goal of achieving further strong growth in the years to come.” In addition, December 2000 has entered the record books at CME. Month-to-date volume was 18.5 million contracts as of yesterday, beating the previous December record of 17.7 million contracts set in 1994.
“This month, uncertainty over interest rates and the election contributed to strong volume in the interest rate and stock index pits, as market participants turned to us to manage their financial risk,” said President and CEO Jim McNulty. “We also are seeing strong volume in overall electronic trading, fueled by growth in E-mini stock index futures. Year-to-date, trading on our GLOBEX®2 electronic trading system reached 33.7 million contracts, up 109 percent from the 16.1 million contracts traded during all of 1999.”
Total 1999 CME volume was 200.7 million contracts with an underlying value of more than $138 trillion – more than seven times the gross national product of the world’s five largest economies. The exchange moves about $1 billion per day in settlement payments, manages $20 billion in collateral deposits and administers more than $1 billion of letters of credit. Further information about CME and its products is available on the CME Web site at www.cme.com.
