Press

Eurex, the international derivatives market, is launching eight new futures contracts on sector indices of Dow Jones STOXX 600 SM and Dow Jones Euro STOXX SM on March 19. The new fu-tures contracts cover the euro zone and European area, respectively, in the sectors banks, technology, telecommunications and healthcare. The sector index futures are designed along the same lines as the existing Dow Jones Euro-STOXX 50 futures.

With the introduction of the new sector index futures, Eurex is expanding its product line for institutional investors. The market interest in futures on European sector indices is rising steadily, as the derivatives market. Eurex is thus responding to the growing need for exchange-traded sector derivatives as well as the steady growth in international mix of investments in selected equities from certain sectors of the economy.

In addition to the eight newly introduced sector index futures, six futures have been traded in the index segment at Eurex to date: futures on the Dow Jones Euro-STOXX 50, Dow Jones STOXX 50, DAX, NEMAX 50, SMI and FOX.

A total of 289 million futures were traded at Eurex last year, roughly 32 million of which were futures contracts in the index products segment. This put the total turnover in futures for the year 2000 about 19 percent higher than the 1999 figure (244 million contracts), with a 28 percent increase (25 million contracts) over 1999 in the index products segment.