CME Contracts Down In April; E-Minis Up

CME Group’s average daily contract volume in April 2009 was down 23 percent from April 2008, to 9.2 million. However, the group’s e-mini equity index contract volume was up 18 percent from the prior year, to 2.9 million, representing nearly a third of the average daily volume.

Although the e-mini contracts are by no means the sole index-based contracts trading on the CME, they do represent the vast majority of the volume in index-based products.