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Dec 03, 2021

Eurex

Equity Index market briefing December 2021

Any parents out there are likely aware of the challenges of buying electronics for their children. In my case, it was a PS5 that was only obtainable by paying a high premium on eBay. Such is the global demand for microchips, and here I blame the bitcoin mining community! In general, supply chain bottlenecks are clearly hitting the real economy and with it comes inflationary pressure. Equity markets still hover near record levels despite the November retracement over new COVID variant fears and the reintroduction of some lockdown measures causing damage to business and consumer confidence.

Eurex saw a burst of activity for STOXX® Europe 600 derivatives, VSTOXX® and EURO STOXX 50® Total Return Futures in reaction to the sharp sell-off. Most encouraging was the record volume and strong liquidity picture for the recently launched Micro-DAX® Futures, which traded over 500k contracts for the month. Oil prices took a knock in a reversal of a strong trend causing renewed interest in Oil & Gas sector futures and options. Negative macroeconomic sentiment increased in specific EM countries such as Turkey and Brazil. This led to further volume growth across our MSCI derivatives segment. The broad EM, EM Latin America, EM EMEA, EM Asia, Europe, and World futures contracts were particularly strong. Several country MSCI index futures also had robust growth compared to the same month last year, notably for: Japan, China, Taiwan, Australia, Thailand, India, Mexico, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.

As we enter the last month of the year, focus shifts a little towards 2022, where the pipeline of new product initiatives looks strong. We will again look to form partnerships with our members to nurture new markets and offer trading opportunities. At the same time, we will also review the volume development for our benchmark products to ensure they remain optimized and deliver the required liquidity, depth and price transparency.


Zubin Ramdarshan, Head of Equity & Index Product Design, Eurex