Investors looking to ADEX
In just its second year of operation, the Athens Derivatives Exchange (ADEX) has found growing popularity among Greek investors as evidenced by the sharp increase in the number of accounts opened last year, up by 187 percent to 9,133. The exchange said yesterday that on average, some 500 investors signed up each month last year. October scored the highest number of new clients, with 664 investors joining the exchange. ADEX said that the number of futures and options traded last year increased by 83 percent to 4.36 million, underlining the increasing demand for these products. Slightly more than 9,000 futures and options transactions were recorded daily last year compared with just 4,717 in 2000. ADEX’s growth story was also evident in the 50 percent jump in turnover. The number of trading members increased by 25 to 65 last year while the number of clearing members rose to 42 from 36. The exchange launched stock futures on four blue chip companies (telecoms operator OTE, National Bank of Greece, Greece’s largest, Coca Cola HBC – the world’s second largest Coca-Cola bottler – and mobile phone company Panafon) in November last year. It plans to introduce stock options on individual stocks and derivative warrants in association with international issuers this year.ADEX is part of the Hellenic Exchanges group of companies. A question hangs over the «day (or year) after» 2004, the Olympic year. A second question is what rate of GDP growth will be needed in order to implement a radical restructuring of the economy in the context of existing goals and conditions.
