Press

Eurex, the world’s largest derivatives exchange, traded 109.8 million contracts in October, 24 percent up on last year (October 2004: 88.4 million contracts). At 1.05 billion contracts, turnover volume in the first ten months has almost surpassed last years total trading on Eurex (turnover in 2004: 1.07 billion contracts). On average, 5.2 million contracts were traded daily in October.

With 56.3 million contracts traded in October, the fixed-income derivatives segment put in the highest turnover on Eurex. The most successful product was, once again, the Euro-Bund Future, with 23.6 million contracts traded. The Euro-Bobl and Euro-Schatz Futures contributed 13.5 million and 13.4 million contracts respectively. The new Euro-Buxl Future, which was launched on 9 September, boasted a turnover of 144,000 contracts in October.

53.5 million contracts were traded in equity-based derivatives in October, of which 32.6 million were in the equity index derivatives segment and 20.9 million in the equity options segment. Equity options where the strongest growing segment, which showed an increase in turnover of 35 percent year-on-year. The top equity index derivative was the future on the DJ Euro STOXX 50 index with around 14 million contracts, an increase of 42 percent year-on-year (October 2004: 9.79 million contracts).

Approximately €15 billion (single counting) was traded in October on the electronic trading platform Eurex Bonds, which rounds out Eurex’s range in the Fixed Income product range, a rise of 84 percent year-on-year (October 2004: 8.1 billion Euro).