.jpg)
The international derivatives exchange Eurex reported today that it traded a total of 132 million contracts in January, up 12 percent year on year. Approximately 6 million contracts per day were traded in January. Open interest – the number of open positions is an important indicator of future growth – continued to grow and totaled around 108 million contracts at the end of the month (January 2006: 100 million contracts).
The strongest performance in January was in equity derivatives with 72.5 million contracts compared with 59 million contracts year on year. Of these, 44.5 million were attributable to equity index derivatives (Jan 2006: 34 million contracts). The number of traded equity options increased to 28 million contracts (Jan 2006: 25 million contracts).
The most heavily traded equity index derivatives were once again futures and options on the DJ Euro STOXX 50 Index. Futures contracts traded a total of 18.4 million contracts up on 12.8 million in January 2006 (+ 44 percent). Options reached 15.8 million contracts (+ 36 percent year on year). The number of traded single stock futures increased tenfold year on year and reached 3.4 million contracts.
The fixed-income derivatives segment grew slightly to 59.7 million contracts (Jan 2006: 59.4 million contracts). 26.7 million contracts were traded in the Euro-Bund-Future, a small increase year on year (Jan 2006: 25.5 million contracts).
The electronic trading platform Eurex Bonds, which rounds out Eurex’s fixed-income product range, reached a volume of 12 billion euros (single counting) in January, almost unchanged compared year on year. Compared with the previous month, trading volume increased by 52 percent (Dec 2006: 8 billion euros).
