Singapore Exchange Makes Stride in Derivatives and Commodities Business

Derivatives and commodities trading grew year-on-year for the month of July reported the Singapore Exchange (SGX) on Friday.

Volume of derivatives contracts was up 12 per cent year-on-year at 5.8 million contracts while daily average volume grew 7 per cent to 270,798 contracts.

Notably, the number of China A50 futures contracts traded tripled to 700,071 contracts from a year earlier while volume of the Nikkei 225 and the MSCI Taiwan contracts grew 7 and 4 per cent respectively.

However, trading volume of Nifty contracts dipped 8 per cent year-on-year.

On the whole, end-July equity index futures open interest at 818,563 was 7 per cent higher from a year ago.

As for the commodities business, SGX said that SICOM rubber futures volume grew 12 per cent year-on-year to 23,938 contracts while volume of OTC iron ore swaps cleared more than doubled to a record-high 20,961 contracts.

Securities turnover was up 19 per cent from June, but plunged 9 per cent to S$26.5 billion year-on-year.

On a positive note, the Catalist board saw greater interest with a 31 per cent increase in volume year-on-year to S$614 million.

The securities borrowing and lending programme recorded a 37 per cent growth year-on-year in daily average outstanding loans to S$26.6 million.

SGX has been redoubling its efforts to increase trading volume and enhance liquidity for its securities market.

As part of its plan, it inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Securities Investors Association (Singapore) (SIAS) earlier this week to bring investing knowledge to the heartlands.

Kick-starting the cooperation is the Community Outreach Education Programme which includes various investment seminars conducted in the heartlands jointly by SGX and SIAS. These seminars range from the basics of financial literacy, such as managing your money to courses on the fundamentals of investing in financial products.