The CME Group has just released its volume figures for the month of March and the FX figures are 10% higher than last month, coming out at 855,000 average futures and options contracts daily. The figures are 20% lower over last year. During the past month, the average daily notional value of FX contracts totalled $104 billion.
Similar to the prior month, FX continued to be the biggest underperformer when compared to last year’s figures, that however should be attributed to the extraordinary market conditions that were dominating the foreign Exchange landscape at the time. With Volatility in FX subsiding, the biggest contributors to growth at the CME Group were interest rates and equities, with the former marking a 35% gain year-on- year.
The Eurodollar futures volume has grown by 47% over last year, averaging 2.8 million contracts per day, while Eurodollar options volumes averaged 916,000 contracts per day, a whopping 132% higher than a year ago.
Overall activity remained roughly unchanged over last month with a total of 14,062,000 average daily volume (ADV) of futures and options contracts, with the other big under- performer being identified in the Energy commodities space where ADV dropped by a whopping 20% when compared to February.
