CME to post highest monthly volumes in its history

CME Group is on course to record the busiest month of trading in its long history, driven largely by a surge of activity on 15 October.

CME Group is on course to record the busiest month of trading in its long history, driven largely by a surge of activity on 15 October. 

Trading levels have been rising as the year has gone on and the group, which owns the Chicago Board of Trade and the New York Mercantile Exchange, is on course to top its all-time high in volumes.

“On October 15 we set an all-time daily record with volume approaching 40 million contracts,” said CME Group executive chairman and president Terry Duffy.

“This reflects the significant client demand during a more volatile period, supported by the company’s unmatched liquidity, tight bid-ask spreads, system reliability and capital efficiency. Bottom line, with nearly 9 million contracts traded that day from Europe, Asia and Latin America, we truly are the place where the world comes to manage risk.”

The exchange group also announced its third quarter results today with a rise in clearing and transactions fees driving and uptick in revenue to USD$762 million, up from USD$714 million in the same period last year.

Indications from the Federal Reserve, that there could be a longer wait before interest rates begin to rise, spurred a wave of trading across multiple exchanges in the US on 15 October.

As a result, over 25 million interest rate futures and options were traded on CME during the day.

It has never been easier than today to execute those transactions in the listed space and therefore volumes tend to explode when we observe market volatility,”said Jim Myers, senior manager, business consulting trading and risk management, Sapient Global Markets.

“If you go back in history and look and the largest one day spikes over the course of the last 20 years you will see far more volume volatility in the ETD space than in the OTC space.”

«