The international derivatives exchange Eurex traded a total of 132 million contracts in January, up 12 percent from 2006. Approximately 6 million contracts per day were traded in January. Open interest continued to grow and totaled around 108 million contracts at the end of the month.
The strongest performance in January was in equity derivatives with 72.5 million contracts compared with 59 million contracts year on year. Of these, 44.5 million were attributable to equity index derivatives. The number of traded equity options increased to 28 million contracts.
The most heavily traded equity index derivatives were once again futures and options on the DJ Euro STOXX 50 Index. Futures contracts traded a total of 18.4 million contracts up on 12.8 million in January 2006. Options reached 15.8 million contracts. The number of traded single stock futures increased tenfold year on year and reached 3.4 million contracts.
The fixed-income derivatives segment grew slightly to 59.7 million contracts. 26.7 million contracts were traded in the Euro-Bund-Future, a small increase year on year.
The electronic trading platform Eurex Bonds, which rounds out Eurex’s fixed-income product range, reached a volume of 12 billion euros (single counting) in January, almost unchanged compared year on year. Compared with the previous month, trading volume increased by 52 percent.