The World Federation of Exchanges conducts an annual survey of the derivatives markets operated by its members, affiliates and other exchanges that voluntarily submit data for this survey. Forty-eight exchanges responded to this year’s survey (the full list can be found in Appendix 2). The survey report is compiled from questionnaire responses supplied by these exchanges as well as data collected from exchange websites.
The key derivatives markets statistics that have been collected through the survey and presented in this report are:
- the number of contracts traded (also referred to as volume traded or volumes)
- the notional value traded and
- the open interest as at year end.
This year for the first time, in addition to aggregate commodity derivatives trading statistics, more granular data on commodity derivatives by underlying has also been collected. The categories by which contracts have been classified are as follows: Agriculture, Energy, Non-precious metals, Precious metals, Index commodity derivatives and Other.
Highlights from the report are:
- Volumes of derivatives contracts traded in 2017 were down slightly (0.2%) on 2016 with a total of 25.03 billion contracts traded.
- An increase in the volume traded in the Americas (up 5.8%) was offset by declines in the volumes traded in the Asia-Pacific and EMEA regions (down 3.5% and 5.3%) respectively.
- While volumes of equity and interest rate derivatives increased on 2016 – up 5.4% and 13.1% - volumes of currency, commodity and other derivatives traded were down 3.2%, 14.5% and 4.3% respectively on 2016.
- Over 3.9 billion interest rate derivative contracts were traded in 2017 - the largest number in the time period examined (since 2005).
- The fall in volumes of commodity derivatives traded was the first such year-on-year decline in volumes in the 13 year period under review and was driven by falls in volumes traded of agriculture and non-precious metals derivatives.
- As total volumes traded in 2017 were largely in line with 2016, the overall shares of volumes traded has shifted with equity and interest rate derivatives now making up 48% and 16% of the total respectively and commodity derivatives accounting for 24%.
Please view the full version of the WFE IOMA 2017 derivatives report for further insights and analysis.