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A record 2.6 million contracts were traded on the EDX London IOB derivatives service during March 2009, with open interest reaching over 8.5 million contracts for the first time since the launch of the service in December 2006. The total notional value traded on the service during the month was $2.5 billion, and trading in Russian and other IOB derivatives accounted for 45 per cent of all volumes traded on EDX London during March.
An important milestone was also reached during the month with the first trade in a derivatives contract based on an Indian company, demonstrating that the choice of products available on EDX London is extending beyond the core areas of the Nordic and CIS regions and becoming increasingly global.
March completed a 12 month period of strong growth on EDX London, with 61.1 million contracts traded across the IOB and Nordic derivatives services during the year to March 2009, an increase of 25 per cent on the previous 12 months. This growth was driven by a 177 per cent increase in the average daily number of contracts traded in IOB single stock derivatives, which by the first quarter of 2009 averaged over 100,000 contracts per day. The most heavily traded product on the IOB service has been options based on Rosneft, with an average daily volume during March of 77,482 contracts traded.
