Eurex Bonds, the electronic fixed-income platform, turned over Euros 11.7 billion (single counting) in December. Eurex Bonds turned over a total of Euros 181.6 billion in 2003, roughly a 34 per cent increase on the 2002 turnover.
The Eurex derivatives market finished 2003 with record turnover of 1.014 billion contracts traded, 27 per cent higher than the previous year’s figure (2002: 801 million contracts).
During the last month of the year, some 66 million contracts were traded and cleared at Eurex, corresponding to arise of some 22 per cent compared with the number traded in December 2002 (54 million contracts).
The capital-market products were the highest-turnover segment in December with 32.2 million contracts traded, accounting for nearly half of the total Eurex turnover. The Euro-Bund future was again the most successful product with 13.4 million contracts traded, a 22 per cent increase over the December 2002 volume in this product. Trading in the Euro-Bobl future exceeded the previous year’s December volume (6.9 million contracts) by 34 percent, increasing to 9.2 million contracts. The Euro-Schatz future, with 7.2 million contracts traded, was 21 percent higher for the month compared with December 2002 (5.9 million contracts).
In equity-based derivatives, 33.8 million contracts were traded at Eurex in December, comprising 19.9 million contracts in the equity-index derivatives segment and 13.9 million contracts in the equity options segment. The turnover in equity-index derivatives rose six percent, year on year. The top contract in equity-index derivatives again in December was the futures contract on the DJ Euro STOXX 50 index, with 9.4 million contracts traded, ahead of the option on the DJ Euro STOXX 50 index (4.2 million contracts). The strongest contract among the equity options at Eurex in December was the option on Allianz, with some 2 million contracts traded, ahead of the option on Munich Re, in which 1.7 million contracts were traded, and the option on Deutsche Telekom, with 1.1 million contracts traded.
In the equity options segment, the Dutch and French equity options showed high growth rates again in December: In Dutch options, the world’s leading equity options exchange, with 392,000 contracts traded, turned over 72 percent more than in December 2002. The French equity options at Eurex, with 163,000 contracts traded, achieved an almost tenfold increase in volume compared with the number traded in December the year before.