CME Trade is Booming
CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, today reported its May 2023 market statistics, showing average daily volume (ADV) increased 3% to 25 million contracts during the month, the highest May ADV in company history. Market statistics are available in greater detail at https://cmegroupinc.gcs-web.com/monthly-volume.
Highest-ever May ADV of 25M contracts
Double-digit volume increases in interest rates, energy, agricultural and metals, as well as many individual products
SOFR futures and options continue ADV growth
May 2023 ADV across asset classes includes:
Interest Rate ADV of 13.9 million contracts
Equity Index ADV of 6.0 million contracts
Options ADV of 4.9 million contracts
Energy ADV of 2.0 million contracts
Agricultural ADV of 1.5 million contracts
Foreign Exchange ADV of 825,000 contracts
Metals ADV of 650,000 contracts
Additional May 2023 product highlights compared to May 2022 include:
Interest Rate ADV increased 20% Record U.S. Treasury futures open interest of 17,856,235 contracts on May 23 SOFR futures ADV increased 126% to 3.4 million contracts SOFR options ADV increased 935% to 1.8 million contracts 30 Day Fed Funds futures ADV increased 112% to 544,000 contracts
Options ADV increased 29% Interest Rate options ADV increased to 50% to 2.9 million contracts Agricultural options ADV increased 24% to 342,000 contracts Energy options ADV increased 33% to 282,000 contracts Metals options ADV increased 39% to 85,000 contracts
Energy ADV increased 12% Natural Gas options ADV increased 32% to 136,000 contracts
Agricultural ADV increased 38% Record Soybean Oil options ADV of 22,633 contracts Soybean Oil futures ADV increased 78% to 150,000 contracts KC HRW Wheat futures ADV increased 108% to 68,000 contracts
Metals ADV increased 30% Aluminum futures ADV increased 120% to 4,500 contracts
Micro Products ADV Micro E-mini Equity Index futures and options ADV of 2.1 million contracts represented 34% of overall Equity Index ADV, Micro WTI Crude Oil futures accounted for 5.2% of overall Energy ADV, Micro Ether futures accounted for 0.2% of overall Equity Index ADV and Micro Bitcoin futures accounted for 0.2% of overall Equity Index ADV
BrokerTec U.S. Repo average daily notional value (ADNV) increased 8% to $292B
About CME Group
As the world's leading derivatives marketplace, CME Group (www.cmegroup.com) enables clients to trade futures, options, cash and OTC markets, optimize portfolios, and analyze data – empowering market participants worldwide to efficiently manage risk and capture opportunities. CME Group exchanges offer the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, energy, agricultural products and metals. The company offers futures and options on futures trading through the CME Globex platform, fixed income trading via BrokerTec and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform. In addition, it operates one of the world's leading central counterparty clearing providers, CME Clearing.
CME Group, the Globe logo, CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Globex, and, E-mini are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. CBOT and Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Inc. NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange and ClearPort are trademarks of New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. COMEX is a trademark of Commodity Exchange, Inc. BrokerTec and EBS are trademarks of BrokerTec Europe LTD and EBS Group LTD, respectively. The S&P 500 Index is a product of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC ("S&P DJI"). "S&P®", "S&P 500®", "SPY®", "SPX®", US 500 and The 500 are trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC; Dow Jones®, DJIA® and Dow Jones Industrial Average are service and/or trademarks of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. These trademarks have been licensed for use by Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. Futures contracts based on the S&P 500 Index are not sponsored, endorsed, marketed, or promoted by S&P DJI, and S&P DJI makes no representation regarding the advisability of investing in such products. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

AI is the Neat Handwriting of the Illiterate
A model in the hands of someone who has read the filing and walked the plant is a clerk. The same model, speaking for someone who has done neither, is a disguise. On AI slop, phantom citations and factslop, why finish stopped being evidence of work, and the containment layer KXCO built so a machine cannot speak as the institution until a source is attached.

Worthship: Do Not Conform to the Age
Worthship is the older English word for worship, and it means to ascribe worth. Bishop Robert Barron preached Romans 12 on 30 August. This essay follows the text into the prison letters, and puts two questions to a graph: do the four readings of that Sunday agree, and was Paul free or in chains when he wrote about despair?

The Truth in All Its Ugliness Must Survive
A majority vote does not determine the truth. Consensus is a mood, gossip is a sport, and a model will write the pretty version for free. Why the ugly number has to survive, why a record beats a dashboard, and what KXCO was built to keep standing when the room changes its mind.

Don't Be the Best, Be the Only: Winning in an AI World
AI is repricing competence downward. What it cannot reproduce is a life. The case for remaining non-fungible, why friction still produces the best ideas, and what it means to build AI systems that keep the human intellect in them.
Every story, signed and delivered.
Subscribe to the kxco channel and get the headline, the AI-written key takeaways, and the chain-anchor link the moment we publish. Audio versions and per-ticker subscriptions arrive in the next iteration.