Press

Eurex, the European derivatives market, achieved another worldwide record with 45 million contracts traded in May, beating its previous record of 42.1 million contracts as the world market leader in March 2000. This represents an increase of 56 percent over the Eurex total for May 1999. On the whole, over 197million contracts have already been traded this year.

Trading in capital market products was especially successful in May. New turnover records were set in several products. Derivatives on short-term government paper achieved outstanding results. With about 4.4 million contracts traded, the Schatz future surpassed its previous record of 3.3 million contracts traded in February 2000 by more than 25 percent, and triple the volume posted in the same month of last year. The option on the Schatz tripled its record result of 105,000 contracts set in October 1999 to about 270,000 contracts in May 2000, and was even some 30 times higher than the May 1999 volume. The Bobl future, with about 5.9 million contracts traded, surpassed its May 1999 figure by 66 percent. The Bund future, the world's most active futures contract in May, further expanded its benchmark position for long term interest rate derivatives. Some 16.2 million contracts were traded at Eurex in May, the second-best performance on a monthly basis after the June 1999 record of 16.4 million contracts traded.

The index products again achieved very good results with about 5.8 million contracts traded. The derivatives on the Dow Jones Euro-STOXX 50 contributed to this, with over 1.6 million contracts traded, their second-highest monthly total to date, and over 220 percent higher than the volume traded in May 1999.

A new record was also set in equity options volume, with some 9.4 million contracts traded, top-ping the previous, February 2000 record by 35 percent, and more than 68 percent over the May 1999 volume. Of the Finnish products, the option on Nokia was especially successful: Over 130,000 contracts were traded in this product in May, double the number traded in April. Altogether, about 180,000 contracts on Finnish stock options were traded in May, an increase of 68 percent over the previous month's figure.

Trading volume on June 1, 2000, with about 1.5 million contracts changing hands, was, as Eurex expected, slightly below the current year's daily average of about 1.8 million contracts traded.

EUREX Trading Volume since 1990
(in contracts traded)