Press

The derivatives market, Eurex, set several new records again in January: With a volume of 40.2 million contracts traded, Eurex beat the previous record of 38.4 million contracts traded in June 1999, setting another worldwide standard. The January contract volume is about 70.7 percent higher than the number posted in the same month of last year, roughly two and a half times the total volume traded in all of business year 1990, the first full year of trading at DTB Deutsche Terminbörse, the German options and financial futures exchange at that time.

In January, the BUND future was again the world's most heavily traded futures contract. Some 14.5 million contracts were traded at Eurex, the second-best performance on a monthly basis (the record was set in June 1999 with 16.4 million contracts traded). Year on year, trading in the BUND future grew 65.5 percent. A new turnover record was also set in the Bobl future with some 6.3 million contracts traded, topping the 6 million contract mark for the first time and surpassing the previous year's volume by 145 percent. Record trading volume was also posted in the Shaz future in January with 2.86 million contracts traded, beating the previous record of 2.58 million contracts traded in October 1999 and and tripling the number traded in January 1999.

In the index-product segment, on an extremely favorable trend overall - showing a 32 percent increase over the January 1999 figure - the steady rise in futures and options on the Dow Jones Euro-STOXX 50 is particularly noteworthy, setting a new record with some 1.45 million futures and options traded (the previous, September 1999 record was 1.3 million contracts).

Among the Finnish products, the option on Nokia was especially convincing with 32,000 contracts traded in January, about 43 percent higher than the number traded in December. This means that, for the first time, the volume traded at Eurex exceeded the trading volume on the Stockholm derivatives exchange, OM. Open interest at Eurex at last count was over 40,000.

EUREX Deutschland Trading Volume since 1990
(in contracts traded)