CME Group Achieves Record Volume In 2008

CME Group, arguably the world’s largest derivatives exchange, traded a record 3.3 billion contracts in 2008, representing $1.2 quadrillion in notional values. The average daily volume for the year was nearly $13 million contracts, up 4 percent from 2007. It should be noted, however, that the CME Group’s ADV for the fourth quarter of 2008 was down 14 percent from the prior-year quarter and down 22 percent year-over-year for December, indicating that the year did not close on a high note.

The exchange’s E-mini family of index-based futures saw their ADV increase 37 percent during the year to 3.5 million contracts. The E-minis represented nearly 27 percent of the exchange’s total ADV in 2008, up from just 20 percent in 2007.

Although the E-minis are not the only index-based futures trading at the CME Group, they do have the highest volumes of its index-based products. The E-mini S&P 500 contracts saw their total volumes for the year jump nearly 53 percent over 2007 to 634 million contracts in 2008. In addition to the S&P 500, there are E-mini contracts tied to the NASDAQ-100, the MSCI EAFE and the Russell 2000, among other major indexes.

CME Group Lists Hardwood Pulp Contracts

CME Group announced in December that hardwood pulp index futures and options on futures would begin trading on the CME Globex platform as of Jan. 12, 2009.

The exchange already lists softwood pulp index futures contracts that launched in September 2007.

The cash-settled hardwood pulp contracts are tied to the PIX BHKP Europe Index from FOEX Indexes Ltd., a provider of pulp and paper price indexes based in Finland. The index tracks the prices of bleached hardwood kraft pulp.