The international derivatives exchange Eurex reported today that in May 2008 trading volumes reached 194.6 million contracts, an increase of 24.5% year-on-year. Average daily trading volume at Eurex was 9.3 million contracts.
Total trading volumes on Eurex in the first five months reached 948.4 million contracts, up more than 22% year-on-year. Open interest increased to almost 148 million contracts.
Equity derivatives benefited from the dividend season and saw the strongest growth y-o-y. Trading volumes almost doubled to 87.9 million contracts. Equity options totaled 40.4 million contracts and single stock futures grew to 47.5 million contracts.
In the equity index derivatives segment, 59.3 million contracts were traded. The future on the Dow Jones Euro STOXX 50 reached 20.2 million contracts, and options on the Dow Jones Euro STOXX 50 grew by 44% y-o-y and totaled 27.2 million contracts. Futures on DJ STOXX sector indices benefited from rising demand and for the first time surpassed 200,000 contracts in a single month.
The fixed income derivatives segment reached 47.3 million contracts. The Euro-Bund Future remained the most heavily traded product of this segment with 19.1 million contracts. 12.7 million contracts were traded in the Euro-Schatz Future, as well as roughly 10.9 million contracts in the Euro-Bobl Future.
At International Securities Exchange (ISE), which has been part of Eurex since the end of December 2007, US options reached a daily average trading volume of 3.6 million contracts. In total, volume increased by almost 14% to 75 million contracts.
Eurex Repo, which operates CHF and EUR repo markets, set new records in May 2008: all Eurex repo markets had an average outstanding volume of 128.1 billion. The Euro-Repo market hit a new record of 71.5 billion. Its secured money market segment, Euro GC Pooling, rose by 220% to an average outstanding volume of 37.8 billion.
The electronic trading platform Eurex Bonds, which rounds out Eurexs fixed-income product range, traded volume of 7.1 billion in May, trailing the April 2008 figure of 7.4 billion.