U.S. Futures Exchange

U.S. Futures Exchange (USFE) is a Chicago-based, electronic futures exchange. USFE was originally Eurex US who bought BrokerTec, but applied and received its own futures exchange license from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In October 2006, Man Group bought a majority share of Eurex US and rebranded the exchange U.S. Futures Exchange. It has been working to release a set of new products under a strategy of bringing innovation to the 100+ year old derivatives business. The chief executive officer is John Spiegel. [cite web|url=http://sev.prnewswire.com/banking-financial-services/20080903/AQW55103092008-1.html|title=U.S. Futures Exchange to List Mini-Sized U.S. Dollar-Denominated DAX(R) Futures Contract|org=U.S. Futures Exchange via PRNewswire|date=September 9, 2008]

Products

On September 3, 2008, USFE announced an exclusive licensing agreement with Deutsche Borse to launch a mini-sized U.S. dollar-denominated DAX(R) futures contract to be launched October 1, 2008. The new contract carries a $10 multiplier, enabling U.S. futures traders access to a leading Germany stock market index without currency exposure. [cite web |url=http://www.usfe.com/pr/USFE%20$DAX%20Press%20Release%20-%209-3-08.pdf|title=U.S. Futures Exchange to list Mini-Sized U.S. Dollar-Denominated DAX® Futures Contract|org=U.S. Futures Exchange|date=September 9, 2008]

On April 18, 2007 USFE launched its first contracts since being re-branded. The first was a Binary Event Future on whether the Chicago Mercantile Exchange would successfully purchase the Chicago Board of Trade. The second was similar except on whether the Intercontinental Exchange would purchase the Chicago Board of Trade. A binary event future settles to 100 if the event occurs and 0 if the event does not occur. The CME-CBOT contract settled on July 13, 2007 to 100 when the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade completed a merger and became the CME Group.

On March 14, 2007 USFE announced plans to launch futures based on ISE indexes. These included the Homebuilders, Gold, SINdex, Revere Natural Gas, and Water Indexes. USFE also announces an exclusive deal with Morningstar to list futures based on their 16 capitalization and style based indexes on May 23, 2007. On June 28, 2007 USFE announced it would launch a series of renewable energy futures starting with on NORDIX Financial Wind Index futures in seven distinct U.S. regions. All of these futures are due to be released in Q4 of 2007

On September 21, 2007, USFE will begin trading Spot Equivalent foreign exchange futures on a 23-hour basis. Spot Equivalent Futures are futures which pay out basis nightly so that the futures contract will price the same as a spot contract in the Foreign exchange market. However, at the same time, it will trade on a transparent, regulated exchange. The first contracts will include Euro (EUR/USD), British pound (GBP/USD), Japanese yen (USD/JPY), Australian Dollar (AUD/USD), Swiss Franc (USD/CHF), and Canadian Dollar (USD/CAD).

Trading Platform

USFE is a fully electronic exchange. Its current platform release, USFE 1.0, is based on Eurex 8.0 developed by Deutsche Borse Systems with an additional market allocation algorithm to incentivize liquidity providers. USFE uses the Eurex network backbone to provide connectivity worldwide.

External links

* [http://www.usfe.com U.S. Futures Exchange Official Website]

References