Chicago Board of Trade (CBoT) launched its full-sized gold and silver contracts last Wednesday in what is becoming a compelling electronic trading versus open outcry competition between CBoT and New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex).
The precious metals on CBoT's electronic trading platform e-CBoT traded modestly on day one. Full-sized gold futures traded 956 contracts while 238 silver futures were traded. Nymex is having a record year for its contracts, with average daily volume of over 60,000 in gold futures and more than 20,000 in silver futures.
The competition features the same sized contracts on e-CBoT as those offered at Nymex, which is committed to maintaining open outcry pits to trade metals and energies. Last Monday, Nymex rolled out an electronic order routing...