The international derivatives market CME Group announced today that the new US credit futures have traded 415 contracts since their launch on June 17th.
“Within just one week of launch, our credit futures are generating strong trading activity as clients turn to more capital-efficient ways to manage their duration risk and credit exposure in the US,” said Agha Mirza, Global Head of Rates and OTC Group of CME. “These products already offer bid margins of less than 0.1% of index units, as well as access to an anonymous, centralized market with significant potential margin offsets.”
“We welcome the new credit index futures to CME Group,” said Matthew Angelucci, Portfolio Manager at PGIM Fixed Income. “The opportunity to insulate credit risk or duration risk by benefiting from margin hedges with CME Group’s deeply liquid futures markets enables us to hedge our portfolios and provide greater liquidity to a greater number of clients.”
CME Group credit futures are the first futures contracts to help market participants manage duration risk through a commodity spread with US Treasury futures. In addition, for the first time, investors can expose and manage credit risk through futures contracts on the Bloomberg duration hedge index. Clients can benefit from automatic margin hedges against CME Group’s interest rate and stock index futures contracts.