Heightened global political uncertainty marked the start of 2017. Event risks around Brexit, the new US administration and economic challenges in Europe require efficient and innovative hedging tools. In addition, market participants anticipate increasing interest rate dynamics in combination with higher inflation expectation.
This prompts strong demand for Eurex Fixed Income (FI) products. In January, 46.7 million FI contracts were traded on Europe’s largest derivatives exchange, an increase of 32% from January 2016, Deutsche Börse announced.
After a sustainable period of remarkably low interest rates, flat yield curves and lower volatility, we are starting to see a pick up in interest in European rates markets”, said Mehtap Dinc, Member of the Executive Boards of Eurex Frankfurt AG and Eurex Zürich AG. “The increased geopolitical risks have translated into better volume and open interest in our periphery and core products”, Dinc added.
In January, Euro-Bund Futures saw robust demand, with 16.7 million traded contracts, 28% more than in January 2016. Furthermore, 11.2 million Euro-Bobl Futures (+34%) and 5.8 million Euro-Schatz Futures (+32%) were traded.
Eurex lists some of the world’s most heavily traded Fixed Income Derivatives, allowing market participants to manage interest rate risk and diversify their portfolios. These instruments serve as a standard reference when comparing and evaluating interest rates in Europe.
While the Euro-Bund, Euro-Bobl, Euro-Schatz, Euro-Buxl, all based on German government bonds, and the Swiss CONF derivatives were launched during the early founding years of Eurex, the exchange started to provide Italian, Spanish and French government bond futures from 2009. All of these products proved their worth to market participants as they navigated the financial and sovereign debt crises of recent years.