Although economists may argue about the health of the nation`s economy, business at Chicago`s world-dominant derivative markets-the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board Options Exchange- is at or near record highs.
Paced by the Merc, which set a $577,000 record price for a membership Wednesday, the three markets experienced trading volume increases of up to nearly 40 percent in July.
Even the tiny MidAmerica Commodity Exchange, a CBOT affiliate, saw its volume increase nearly 3 percent.
Volume figures released by the Merc and the CBOT revealed an indisputable fact: The Merc, long second to the Board of Trade, threatens to overtake it as the world`s busiest futures market. The Merc has traded 78.2 million contracts in 1992, compared with 89.2 million at the CBOT.
The $577,000 seat sale at the Merc beat the previous record by $7,000. The exchange also set a record of nearly 4 million contracts in open interest, a critical measure of liquidity.
The CBOT reported that July volume reached 13.6 million contracts, up nearly 20 percent from the same period last year. The exchange`s financial complex, principally its 5- and 10-year U.S. Treasury note futures and its U.S. Treasury bond contracts, continued to surge.
At the CBOE, officials reported that July volume reached 10.2 million contracts, up 23 percent from the same period last year. Equity leaps, a relatively new contract that lets a holder stake out a long-term position in stock options, recorded a 72 percent increase, with 76,497 contracts bought and sold in the month.
