The normally slow summer trading season has been anything but that at the CME.
CME Group, which runs the world’s largest derivatives marketplace, announced it saw several volume records in a number of crude oil related products over the past two weeks.
Crude Oil prices have bounced around nicely in early August, starting the month at about $108, dipping to $102 before rising back up to about $106, as per the chart below. Nothing like a burst if volatility to get traders going.
Crude Oil prices, Sept 2013 NYMEX. Source: MarketWatch.
The records at the CME included:
- Thursday August 8 — NYMEX Brent futures had record trading volume of 90,390 contracts, compared to 68,893 on July 19th. Note that in July, average daily volume for NYMEX Brent futures was the highest ever, at 50,679.
- Thursday August 8 — open interest for NYMEX Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) futures contracts reached a new record of 1,900,710 contracts.
- Tuesday August 6 — open interest for NYMEX Brent (BZ) crude oil futures reached a record of 64,506 contracts.
- Thursday August 1 — open interest for CME Group’s suite of Light Louisiana Sweet (LLS) contracts reached a new record of 52,645 contracts.
The CME’s record oil volumes follow volume records we’ve also seen in Gold trading at the CME in late July. A good time to be a broker….
For the CME Group press release click here.
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