The Chicago Mercantile Exchange plans to list futures and options on futures contracts on the Israeli Shekel as measured against the US dollar.
“As part of CME’s ongoing program of attracting new customers to our products, we continue to look at emerging economies to expand our FX offering,” said Rick Sears, managing director, CME Foreign Exchange. “As Israel’s real GDP grew by 5 percent in 2005, driven in part by international trade, we see corresponding prospects for Shekel trading in the long-term, and CME is poised to help meet that need with this latest FX product offering.”
The CME Israeli Shekel contract will be listed for trading only on the CME Globex(R) electronic trading platform and is scheduled to launch at 5 p.m. Sunday, May 7, 2006 for the trade date of Monday, May 8, 2006.
Trading hours will be from 5 p.m. until 4 p.m. the following day (Central time). The futures contract will have six expirations listed in the March quarterly cycle. The new contract will be sized at 1,000,000 Shekels and will have a minimum price movement, or tick size, of US$0.00001 per Shekel (or US$10.00). The contracts will be physically delivered.