January was the busiest month ever for both interest rate and equity index products on CME, with 22.7 million interest rate and 6.6 million equity index futures and options changing hands. CME s benchmark Eurodollar futures contract set a new record of 17.5 million contracts traded, up 109 percent from January 2000. The Eurodollar is the most actively traded futures contract in the United States. Live cattle futures also reached a record 511,050 contracts traded, rising 47 percent above earlier levels. Included in the open interest figures are 376,071 open positions in agricultural products and 50,127 open positions in Euro FX currency options both new records.
Open interest is the number of futures and options positions outstanding at the close of trading.