The Exchange says it will offer customers an opportunity to use the system in a full production simulation on Saturday, 14 December, 2002 and Saturday, 11 Janaury, 2003.

The new date marks another round of delays for the Eagle Project, which was most recently pencilled in for a December debut, some three weeks after the commencement of trading of single stock futures over the OneChicago joint venture. The initial summer start for the introduction of Eagle was set back due to technical problems caused by capacity constraints on the Globex system.

The Exchange has given no reason for the latest setback, which follows two weeks of testing of the technology in a mock trading environment.

"We have been pleased with the Eagle mock trading sessions we have conducted with our customers over the past two weeks in our user test environment," insists Scott Johnston, managing director and chief information officer. "Production simulation using the full Globex system on two occasions will provide both CME and its customers the opportunity to evaluate the full effect of the enhancements in advance of the launch."

Eagle (an acronym for Electronic Arbitrage Globex Liquidity Enhancer) is designed to enable CME customers, for the first time, to trade Eurodollar calendar spreads on Globex in a way that replicates how those same spreads trade in the open outcry environment.

Following the launch of Eagle in Eurodollars, the new technology will be rolled out to the exchange's other electronically traded products in the coming months. In a second release planned for later next year, the system will accommodate additional Eurodollar trading strategies, including "packs," "bundles" and "butterflies."