The international derivatives market Eurex traded 81 million contracts in February and recorded year-on-year growth of around 10 percent (February 2003: 73.7 million contracts). On average, approximately four million contracts were traded and cleared each day.
In the capital markets products, 44.3 million contracts were traded and settled on Eurex, up by around four percent on the same month last year (42.8 million contracts). The most successful product was once again the Euro-Bund future contract, with 17.3 million contracts traded (February 2003: 19.3 million contracts). A total of 12.4 million Euro-Bobl future contracts were traded. Trading in Euro-Schatz futures recorded the strongest year-on-year growth of all capital market products, up by around 26 percent to total 10 million contracts.
The electronic trading platform Eurex Bonds, which rounds off Eurex’s fixed-income product range, recorded strong growth in the trading activities of its market participants in February 2004. Eurex Bonds generated turnover of 18.5 billion euros in February (single counting). This corresponds to an increase of 30 percent compared with February 2003 (14.2 billion euros (US$ 17.75 billion)).
A total of 36.7 million contracts were traded for equity-based derivatives in February, 19 million of which were attributable to equity index derivatives and 17.7 million of which related to equity options. The most successful equity index derivative contracts in February were futures and options on the DJ Euro STOXX 50 index, which combined accounted for 13.2 million contracts. A total of 5.8 million contracts were traded for options on the DJ Euro STOXX 50 index, which corresponds to an increase of around 20 percent as against February 2003.
Dutch equity options recorded strong growth in February: at around 707,000 contracts, trading volume was up 65 percent year-on-year. This gives Eurex a market share of approximately eleven percent.