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The Chicago Board Options Exchange has said trading during December rose 1% as the exchange recorded its busiest year. The strong end to 2008 was recorded despite the Options Clearing Corporation revealing the US options market declined 7% during the month amid indications that options traders moved away from individual equity options to index-based option contracts.
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Eurex has said December trading fell 1.3% year-on-year but the European exchange was still able to report a new annual trading record as total trading activity throughout 2008 totalled 2.17bn contracts.
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The election of a new US president has heightened speculation about a merger of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Philip McBride Johnson, a former chairman of the CFTC, argues forcefully here that to combine the agencies would be a grave error. Derivatives markets are different from securities markets for good reasons, and each needs different approaches, to matters ranging from short selling to insider trading.
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CME Group’s volume report for 2008, released on Monday, gave scope for pleasure and disappointment. The US derivative exchange group achieved a record trading volume of 3.3bn contracts, 4% up from a year ago, its eighth consecutive year of growth. But its core product complex, interest rate derivatives, continued to shrink in December.
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2008 was a record year for the International Securities Exchange, the New York equity options exchange owned by Eurex.
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Mercado Español de Futuros Financieros, derivatives arm of Spain’s Bolsas y Mercados Españoles, has said trading during 2008 soared to a new exchange record.