The Chicago-headquartered North American Derivatives Exchange (Nadex), which operates a regulated binary options offering under registration with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), today reported results for its first quarter (Q1) trading metrics.
Nadex said the total number of trades during Q1 2016 rose 64% year-over-year (YoY) when compared to the same month in 2015, while trading volumes during that period were also lifted by 68%.
The company said that four of the five mostly traded binary options contracts where in Forex , including across British pound, Japanese yen, and Australian dollar contracts, and believed that this meant that traders were finding Nadex to be an alternative to traditional forex brokerages.
The most heavily traded contracts were the US 500 which is tied to the price of the CME E-mini S&P 500 Index Futures, and contracts in the EUR/USD exchange rate, according to the update. Options contracts, whether plain vanilla, exotic or binary, can be powerful tools in an investor's portfolio, provided that high standards and ethics exist within an offering, such as in the regulated enviroment that Nadex offers via its exchange.
"We're really becoming mainstream," said Tim McDermott, CEO of Nadex. "Part of that is our technology innovations, bringing free, powerful trading platforms to our members. But we think the main reason is that our business model levels the playing field for retail traders, by offering on-exchange, limited risk, and low-cost access to the markets."
Finance Magnates conducted a review of Nadex's platform earlier in the quarter as attention on binary options started to build globally towards the end of Q1. Nadex had halted dealing with clients in Canada in December, and months later regulators across all provinces took a stand against binary options.
