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DGCX posts contracts value of $15.35b

DUBAI — The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX) yesterday said the total value of traded contracts in 2006 reached $15.35 billion with the last day of the year registering the highest number of contracts traded in a day.

The exchange, a joint venture between the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, Financial Technologies and Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd., ended its first fiscal year by launching five new contracts for trading. These include silver contracts, three currency contracts — Euro/USD, GBP/USD and Yen/USD — and the Fujairah Fuel Oil Futures Contract.

The DGCX said in a statement that during 2006, a total of 612862 contracts valued at $15.35 billion were traded. The peak performance came in the month of November, when the Exchange registered its highest volume of 81493 contracts valued at $2.82 billion. The last trading day of 2006 saw 6714 contracts traded - the highest number of contracts traded in a single day.

Gold contract, which was launched in November 2005, continued to lead the table with a total of 497641 kilograms traded during the year valued at nearly $10 billion. For the year, the currency contracts churned a volume of 59176 contracts valued at $4.78 billion.

Gold outperformed other contracts by posting a gain of 22.66 per cent. Silver on the same basis returned 18.72 per cent. In the currency segment the GBP contract was the best performer recording a gain of 7.27 per cent. On the losers' side were The yen and fuel oil contracts which lost by 2.47 per cent and 1.54 per cent respectively. During the month of May, the precious metals market witnessed euphoric conditions with gold and silver prices registering new 26-year peaks. On DGCX the near-term gold clicked a yearly high of $732 per troy oz while silver contract traded at a highest recorded price of $15.08 per troy oz in May 2006.

During 2006, the exchange signed MOU’s with other international exchanges including Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM) and CBOT.

The last trading session of the year saw the exchange registering its highest-ever traded volumes per day at 6714 contracts. The overall traded volume for the month of December stood at 66,455 contracts. As in the past, gold contracts remained in the fore front churning a volume of 47,666 contracts.

In the currency market segment, whereas the volumes in the Euro contracts registered a fall of nearly 46 per cent, trading in Yen contracts recorded a sharp jump of nearly 71 per cent compared to the November volumes. A total of 18694 currency futures contracts were traded during the month, with GBP contract leading the table with a volume of 12262 contracts valued at $1.20 billion. The Euro and GBP contracts registered a volume of 2628 and 3804 contracts respectively. The December 2006 maturity currency contracts were settled through delivery of the respective currencies. A total of 2.3 million British Pounds valued at $ 4.4 millions and 60 million Japanese Yen valued at $ 0.5 million were delivered on DGCX for December 2006 maturity contract. Local as well as International banks participated in the settlement process.