CME Group Inc., the world's largest and most diverse derivatives marketplace, today announced the launch of trading and clearing services for new "in delivery" month European Union Allowance and Certified Emission Reduction serial options contracts. Trading will be available on the New York trading floor and clearing services will be available through CME ClearPort(R), a set of flexible clearing services open to over the counter (OTC) market participants to substantially mitigate counterparty risk and provide neutral settlement prices across asset classes, scheduled to begin on September 20 for trade date September 21. These contracts are listed with NYMEX and subject to the rules and regulations of NYMEX and CME.
The contracts and commodity codes for the serial options will be: in delivery month European Union Allowance (9G) and in delivery month Certified Emission Reduction (9E).
These options contracts are listed on a quarterly basis and will expire into the December contract of the same year. The March, June, and September 2010 serial options contracts, for example, will all expire into the December 2010 futures contract. A market participant holding an in-the-money option will receive a position in the December futures contract. In the European carbon market the year-end futures contracts are generally the most liquid. Accessing the more liquid year-end futures by means of these serial options will allow market participants to benefit from the lesser time value of these instruments. These options provide a set of complementary risk management tools to the marketplace.
The first listed month will be the March 2010 contract. The contracts will be listed on a consecutive quarterly basis through the September 2012 contract month with the exception of the December 2010 and December 2011 contracts months, which will not be listed for trading.
The minimum price fluctuation will be euro 0.01 per allowance. There will be 10 strike prices in increments of euro 0.50 per allowance above and below the at-the-money strike price.
For more information please visit www.cmegroup.com/clearport.