Twelve Italian blue chips will be traded at Eurex from 23 February, following the launch of a further nine new options on Italian equities. The three Italian equity options already listed at Eurex will be relaunched with what Deutsche Borse calls “new and improved specifications.”
In addition to the seven Italian blue chips that are components of the Euro STOXX 50 Index, Eurex will launch five further options on Italian blue chips. Eurex participants will then be able to trade Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Swiss and Italian equity options on a single platform. Eurex will then be offering its customers trading in options on 44 of the 50 Euro STOXX 50 equities.
As in the Dutch and French segment, all of the Italian equity options are to be supported by continuous market making, with market makers who have a binding commitment to quote prices in the order book not just on request, but on a continuous basis.
The smallest possible price movement (tick size) for all Italian equity options tradable at Eurex is 0.0005 euros, which offers participants the most effective hedging opportunities. All of the Italian equity options at Eurex will be available for trading with terms of up to 24 months. Moreover, Eurex offers a facility for block trades, with a minimum order size of 250 contracts, which will enable larger transactions to be executed without execution risk. Eurex is waiving the trading fees for its customers for the first three months of trading in the Italian equity options.
The trading activity of Eurex customers in the segment for French equity options also increased again substantially in January. After 19 trading days, over 280,000 equity options have already changed hands at Eurex, roughly 6 times as many as in the same period of time last year. Eurex has achieved substantial gains in market share in January, with some 13 per cent of the total market in French equity options on average, measured in terms of the nominal value of the equity options on average, measured in terms of the nominal value of the equity options (nominal value of the transactions). Eurex posted increase in Dutch equity options as well. The derivatives market is reporting over 800.000 contracts traded and cleared in January to date, twice as many as the year before. This corresponds to a market share of about 13 per cent.