The Chicago Board of Trade said on Thursday daily derivatives trading volume in May averaged a record 3.628 million contracts, up 20 percent from April and 18 percent higher than May 2005. Volume growth was helped by a "roll" of positions in Treasury debt contracts to September from June in the second half of the month.
Total May volume at the No 2 US futures exchange was also a record at 79.8 million contracts, beating the previous high set in March at 70.5 million. Average daily volume on the e-CBOT electronic trading platform in May was up 10 percent from 2005 at 2.5 million contracts. Some 20 percent of financial options were traded electronically in May, up from six percent a year ago.
Total financial futures and options volume rose 12 percent on the year, helped by heavy trading in two-year Treasury note and 30-day federal funds futures.
Although the financial segment had the slowest growth of CBOT's four product groups, turnover still accounted for over 80 percent of total volume.
CBOT's electronically-traded precious metals contracts continued to set new records, and May's average daily volume of 67,852 contracts was up 2,258 percent from a year ago.
The CBOT gold complex had about a 37 percent market share of listed gold futures in North America, while the silver complex had a market share of about 27 percent, the exchange said.
Agricultural derivatives trading in May rose 44 percent from a year ago to a daily average of 470,836 contracts, pushed up by heavy trading in wheat and corn futures.
CBOT said its average rate per contract (RPC) for the three months ended April was 56.2 cents, up from 55.2 cents in the three months ended March. The RPC, a key measure of margins, is reported as a three-month rolling average on a one-month lag.
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