New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) confirmed last week that it would launch its mini metals contracts on the same day that its competitor, London Metal Exchange (LME) debuts its own, setting up the start of a mouth-watering volumes race between the rival exchanges. Adding further interest was the possibility that LME could launch the contracts on an unproven trading system, Select version four plus.
The majority of the industry's concerns lay in LME's lack of distribution and functionality of its Select system compared to that of Chicago Mercantile Exchange's Globex system, through which Nymex's lookalike contracts would trade. It was that matter which people said would be likely to determine which of the exchanges would hold the larger volume after the two sets...