Volume on GLOBEX2, CME’s electronic trading system, rose 165 percent to 6,598,069 contracts, while year-to-date electronically traded volume is up 143 percent to 22,788,236 contracts.
The underlying value of the contracts traded in April totaled $22.6 trillion.
In April all of CME’s four major product groups saw volume increases over year-ago numbers. Interest rate volume increased 66.6 percent; equity index volume rose 76.7 percent; currency volume increased 6.9 percent; and agricultural volume posted gains of 12.1 percent.
CME in April traded an all-time monthly record of 6.4 million options on futures contracts, comprised largely of Eurodollar options, with a record 5.8 million changing hands. Euro FX currency options traded an April record of 40,913.
Volume in interest rate products surpassed that of any previous April, with 21.2 million contracts changing hands, including an April record of 15.2 million Eurodollar futures, the world’s most actively traded futures contract. Equity index products also notched an April record at 8.6 million. Included in the equity index total are an all-time record 2.9 million E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures and an April record 3.1 million E-mini S&P 500 futures.
Euro FX currency futures traded an April record of 368,320 contracts. Milk futures set an all-time monthly volume record of 9,845 contracts.
Open interest on CME at the end of April stood at 11.5 million positions, near the exchange’s all-time high of 11.9 million positions set March 15. Open interest in CME options stood at an all-time high of 5.9 million positions, including a record 4.2 million Eurodollar options. In addition, milk futures reached record open interest of 16,067 positions on April 30.
Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (www.cme.com) is an international marketplace that brings together buyers and sellers on its trading floors and GLOBEX2 around-the-clock electronic trading system. CME offers futures contracts and options on futures primarily in four product areas: interest rates, stock indexes, foreign currencies and agricultural commodities. On Nov. 13, 2000, CME finalized its transformation into a for-profit, shareholder-owned corporation as it became the first U.S. financial exchange to demutualize by converting its membership interests into shares of common stock that can trade separately from exchange trading privileges. The exchange moves about $1 billion per day in settlement payments, manages $30 billion in collateral deposits and administers more than $1 billion of letters of credit.
