Press

Eurex, the European derivatives market, set several new records again in March: With volume of 42.1 million contracts traded, the world's market leader beat its previous record of 40.2 million contracts traded in January this year. Eurex topped the March 1999 volume by 25 percent. A total of 121.5 million contracts were traded during the first quarter of 2000, an increase of more than 45 percent over the same period of 1999. Trading volume on the Eurex system for the first quarter is thus already higher than the volume traded in all of business year 1996 (116 million contracts.).

The Shaz future also did well last month, setting a new record with some 3.4 million contracts traded and surpassing last year's total by 162 percent. The previous record was set in February 2000 with 3.3 million contracts traded. The Bobl future achieved its second-highest monthly volume in March with 5.9 million contracts traded, surpassing last year's trading volume by 46 percent. The Bund future, still the world's most heavily traded futures contract, was again the benchmark for long-term interest-rate futures in March. About 14.5 million of these contracts were traded at Eurex in March, the third-highest monthly volume to date.

The index products, with over 7.2 million contracts traded, also set a new record in March (pre-vious record: 6.8 million contracts in September 1999). This was due in no small part to the steady rise in futures and options on the Dow Jones Euro-STOXX 50 in particular: With a record volume of about 2 million contracts traded, turnover in these products exceeded the previous, December 1999 high of 1.4 million contracts by 34 percent. Turnover in Dow Jones Euro STOXX futures, with more than 1.4 million contracts traded, was about 219 percent higher than the March 1999 figure, and even more than 614 percent higher in the options, with 540,000 con-tracts traded. The DAX future, with over 1.5 million contracts traded, set a new record in monthly volume for this product (previous high: 1.4 million contracts traded in March 1999).

Of the Finnish products, the option on UPM-Kymmene was particularly successful in March: The volume of 39,000 contracts traded was six times as high as the number traded in February and is the best performance by a Finnish stock option on a monthly basis. Turnover of 37,500 contracts was posted in the option on Nokia, another 20 percent increase over the previous month's fig-ure. Roughly 20,000 contracts were also traded in the option on Sonera for the first time. Alto-gether, about 100,000 contracts on Finnish stock options were traded in March 2000, as well as over 25,000 Finnish index derivatives, a 62 percent increase over the previous month's volume. Total turnover in the Finnish products rose from 77,000 contracts traded in February to some 125,000 contracts traded in March.

EUREX Trading Volume since 1990
(in contracts traded)