CME Launches E-mini NASDAQ Comp. Index Futures - symbol QCN
Location: Chicago
Author: Anita Liskey
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) yesterday launched trading in E-mini NASDAQ Composite Index futures at 8:30 am Central time on its GLOBEX electronic trading platform.
“The new E-mini NASDAQ Composite Index futures contract provides a significant tool for equity market risk management and price discovery for a wide variety of asset and other financial managers,” said John L. Jacobs, CEO of NASDAQ Financial Products.
“We are pleased to be expanding our range of products based on NASDAQ’s benchmark indexes,” said CME Chairman Terry Duffy. “NASDAQ and CME have long been pioneers in their respective markets and this new contract represents our mutual commitment to further innovation.”
“E-mini NASDAQ Composite Index futures will further expand CME’s diverse array of popular electronically traded equity index contracts. Since its launch in 1999, the E-mini NASDAQ-100 contract has been one of our most popular products, posting compounded annual volume growth of 171 percent,” said Craig Donohue, who will become CME’s CEO on Jan.1, 2004. “The significant growth in our E-mini stock index futures contract has boos ted average daily electronic trading levels to over 1.2 million contracts per day in the third quarter and electronic trading now accounts for fully 45 percent of CME volume.”
CME E-mini NASDAQ Composite Index futures will be sized at $20 times the NASDAQ Composite Index, or approximately $38,000 at current index levels, and will have a tick size of 0.50 index points or $10.00. The index will trade on CME’s GLOBEX platform Monday through Thursday from 3:30 p.m. (Central time) to 4:30 p.m. and from 5:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. the following day, and on Sunday from 5:30 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. the following day.
The NASDAQ Composite Index is a market capitalization-weigh ted index of all the common stocks lis ted on the NASDAQ and is the broadest, most well-diversified real-time representation of the performance of NASDAQ-lis ted companies. The NASDAQ-100 Index is a modified capitalization-weigh ted index of the 100 largest non-financial stocks traded on NASDAQ. Investors may choose to spread between the two products, for example, in order to increase or reduce exposure to the large-cap stocks that predominate in the NASDAQ-100, or to capture spread opportunities between the two indexes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
