ADEX to offer Euro Stoxx 50 options, futures
The Athens Derivatives Exchange (ADEX), Greece’s futures and options market, will start trading DJ Euro Stoxx 50 futures and options in the fall in an effort to expand business, officials said yesterday. «It will be easier for Greek investors to trade these benchmark contracts locally,» ADEX’s business development director, Nikos Porfyris, told Reuters. «Some Greek brokers are Eurex members and could become market makers for the contract. Index compiler Stoxx Ltd’s DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index of top eurozone blue chips is a heavily traded benchmark tracked by an estimated 32 billion euros of «passive» investment funds, according to investment bank CSFB. The flagship contract traded an average 337,000 contracts in July. Stoxx Ltd is a joint venture between Dow Jones Indexes, part of Dow Jones & Co. of the United States, the Deutsche Boerse and the Swiss Exchange (SWX). Stoxx started up in 1997 to exploit the stock market shift to pan-European trading, away from a national focus. Index compilers earn license fees from brokers or other firms that offer financial products to investors based on indices. ADEX will pay a license fee to Stoxx on a per contract basis, Porfyris said. «The contracts will open up new trading strategy possibilities between the Euro Stoxx 50 and the local FTSE/ASE-20 blue chip index, on the same screen,» he said. ADEX, which started trading euro/dollar currency futures on May 19 this year, as the single currency jumped to a new four-year high, will also launch an options contract by October to complement the futures. Expanding its product range beyond stock index instruments in hopes of boosting volumes, the exchange will start mock trading in the options contract next week. The size of the cash-settled contract on the euro/dollar exchange rate is 62,500 euros. The required margin to trade the futures, in euros, is 4.25 percent. Bid and offer prices are in US dollars per euro up to four decimal points. The tick, the minimum price fluctuation, is 0.0001 dollars per euro, or $6.25. ADEX currently trades futures and options on Greek stock indices along with individual stock futures and a Greek government bond future.
