CME Group, a derivatives marketplace, announced on Thursday that it would add Communication Services Sector futures contract to its suite of E-mini S&P Select Futures. The new futures will be available to trade from September 10, 2018.
The Communication Services Sector futures join the ten already existing Select Sector futures products on CME’s marketplace. Currently, the group offers E-mini S&P Select Sector future products in the technology, healthcare, utilities, consumer staples, finance, consumer discretionary, energy, materials, industrial, and real estate sectors.
According to the statement, for Select Sector futures more than 12,000 contracts were traded per day in the second quarter of this year on CME’s platform. This was an increase of 71 percent year-on-year. To help rebalance the exposure between the new sector and existing Select Sector Index futures on its marketplace, the group will give customers a fee waiver for Basis Trade at Index Close (BTIC) transaction for the new contract.
Tim McCourt
Source: LinkedIn
Commenting on the addition of the contract, Tim McCourt, CME Group Global Head of Equity Index Products and Alternative Investments said: "We are pleased to offer our customers precise exposure to the rapidly-changing communications sector through our suite of E-mini S&P Select Sector Index futures. We continue to see strong market demand for liquid, cost-effective and capital-efficient tools to track the same underlying indices as the most popular ETFs."
Planned revision of the Global Industry Classification Standard sectors
The addition of the futures comes just ahead of the planned revision of the S&P Dow Jones Indices and MSCI’s Global Industry Classification Standard sectors on September 21, 2018. The revision is for the information technology, consumer discretionary and telecommunications sectors.
Following this, the newly updated sector will be renamed to Communication Services. The sector will consist of 26 companies. This will include AT&T, Verizon, Facebook, Netflix, Google, and Disney.
