The international derivatives exchange Eurex traded 179 million contractsin February, an increase of 32% as against February 2007.
The average daily turnover in February was 8.5 million contractscompared with 6.7 million in February 2007. Open interest has increasedfurther and reached a value of 134.4 million contracts at the end of February, as against almost 128 million at the end of January 2008.
Equity-index derivatives once again are the largest segment the number of contracts traded was up by 63% year-on-year to 76 million. The option on the Dow Jones Euro STOXX 50 index reached its second-best month with around 32 million contracts.
The segment equity derivatives rose to 30.3 million contracts after 25.6 million in February 2007. There is strong demand for the Spanish equity options, turnover grew by 65% as against the previous month, reaching approximately 150,000 contracts. Single stock futures reached 3.6 million contracts.
The fixed-income derivatives segment improved compared with the previousmonth but also year-on-year. 72 million contracts were traded, in January 2008 it was 70 million contracts and in February 2007 approximately 63 million contracts.
Around 28 million contracts were traded on the Euro-Bund-Future. In theEuro-Schatz-Future around 19.5 million contracts were traded, around 16.8million in the Euro-Bobl-Future.
The International Securities Exchange, a subsidiary of Eurex sinceDecember 2007, totaled at 73.3 million contracts in February, an increaseof 44% y-o-y. This equals an average daily volume of 3.6 million contracts.