The international derivatives market Eurex turned over around 94 million contracts in June and therefore closed the first half of 2004 with record turnover. Over 553 million contracts were traded in the first six months of 2004, up by around 5 percent on the same period of the previous year (524 million contracts).
The strongest performance in June 2004 was once again delivered by the Fixed Income Derivatives segment, which accounted for more than half of Eurex's traded volume. The Fixed Income Derivatives segment traded a total of around 54.5 million contracts. The Euro Bund Future, the most heavily traded futures contract in the world, remained the most successful product on Eurex with 21.5 million contracts. The Euro Bobl Future accounted for around 16 million contracts, the second-best result since the record month in March 2004 (16.9 million contracts). 12.8 million Euro Schatz Future contracts were traded, up by around 10 percent on June 2003 and by 42.4 percent on the previous month. Half tick pricing was introduced on June 9, reducing the tick size for Euro Schatz Futures from 0.01 percent to 0.005 percent. Half tick pricing enables finer distinctions to be made between the prices of the various Euro Schatz products.
39.1 million contracts were traded for equity-based derivatives in June, 23.7 million of which were attributable to equity index derivatives and 15.4 million of which related to equity options. The Italian equity option segment, which was expanded in February, achieved a new record of 16,170 contracts. Its highest previous level was 15,328 contracts. As of July 19, institutional and private investors will also be to trade in Futures on the Dow Jones Italy Titans 30 index, in addition to options on the 12 most liquid Italian stocks. The strongest performer in the equity index derivatives segment in June was once again the DJ Euro STOXX 50 Future, up 12 percent month-on-month with around 11 million contracts traded.
The electronic trading platform Eurex Bonds, which rounds off Eurex's fixed-income product range, recorded a volume of around 11 billion euros (single counting) in June 2004. This amounts to an increase of roughly 22 percent month-on-month.