CME created the world’s first financial futures contracts by introducing futures on seven foreign currencies in May 1972. The original currency contracts included CME® British pounds, CME Canadian dollars, CME Deutsche marks, CME French francs, CME Japanese yen, CME Mexican pesos and CME Swiss francs. . Today, CME’s currency market is the world’s largest regulated marketplace for foreign exchange (FX) trading. In 2004, a record 51 million FX contracts were traded at CME, up 50 percent from the prior year, with 66 percent of the trades conducted electronically on the CME Globex® platform. Since launching the original CME FX futures contracts, CME has become the largest financial derivatives exchange in the United States and most diversified in the world. CME has introduced a number of innovative products - including CME Eurodollar futures, the world’s most actively traded interest rate futures contract, and CME E-mini® Equity products - that serve as benchmarks for market users worldwide.