CME Group Inc.'s (CME) year-over-year daily trading volume rose
31% in November from a year earlier and 24% from the prior month,
the exchange operator said, continuing a trend of growth.
CME has seen traders come back to its markets in recent quarters
after the financial crisis drove banks and hedge funds to scale
back their investing activity. In October, CME said its
third-quarter earnings rose 21%, helped by robust trade in
derivatives contracts linked to commodities, interest rates and
indexes.
In November, daily volume averaged 14.2 million contracts, with
83% of the month's total of 297 million being traded
electronically. It's the highest average daily volume since
September 2008--when the financial crisis was cresting--except for
May of this year, which was boosted by that month's "flash
crash."
The world's biggest futures exchange operator said interest-rate
futures volume--its biggest product in terms of contract
volume--rose 46% from a year earlier to 7 million contracts a
day.
Energy contract volume rose 6.1%, foreign-exchange contracts
volume climbed 23% and metals contracts' volume increased 34%.
Equity-index volume rose 15%.
Shares of CME closed Wednesday at $300.04 and were inactive
premarket. The stock has fallen 11% this year after surging
three-quarters in 2009.
-By Nathan Becker, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2855;
nathan.becker@dowjones.com