Key Milestones in 2007 to Better Serve Your Needs Dear Valued CME Globex Customers: In 2007, we continued to reach a number of key milestones with the most important being the completion of our historic merger with the Chicago Board of Trade in July. In recent weeks you have helped us come closer to integrating our exchanges through a number of mock trading sessions. We will soon complete the transition of CBOT products to the CME Globex platform, and we realize this could not have been accomplished without your participation and feedback. We also want to highlight some of our other accomplishments that could not have occurred without you. In October, for the first time, the CME Globex platform surpassed one billion contracts traded in a single year. That is a tremendous milestone to reach considering that only in September 2004 did we surpass one billion contracts traded on the platform since its launch in 1992. The momentum in electronic trading has continued with our total volume exceeding 273 million contracts last month of which a record 81 percent were traded electronically. This year we also continued to see the successful growth of NYMEX and COMEX® futures and options with several daily volume records achieved on CME Globex, and now approximately 900,000 energy and metals contracts trade every day electronically. In order to facilitate your trading needs, we launched a number of functionality enhancements to improve and expand electronic futures and options markets execution. These included User-Defined Spreads (Combos, launched in March, enable customers to define and trade unique options strategy instruments intra-day), Enhanced Strike, Trade & Settlement Prices (supporting non-positive trade, strike and settlement prices for futures and options for the first time), and the FIX/FAST market data format, launched in October - the basis of a new industry standard for market data and improves bandwidth scalability. Finally, to better support customer development and testing efforts, in 2007 we rolled out two new testing environments, Certification and New Release, with higher bandwidth connectivity options to improve testing capabilities. Looking ahead to 2008, we are excited about many opportunities, including the integration of e-cbot products onto the CME Globex platform in January. We also will continue to provide you with innovative products and technology, along with our superior customer service, that you expect from CME Globex as the world's leading electronic trading platform. Your views and input throughout the coming year will once again play an important role in our ongoing efforts to provide you with products and services you need to grow your business. On behalf of all of our colleagues at CME Group, we wish you a safe and happy holiday season and New Year. Sincerely,
Welcome to the December 2007 CME Globex Newsletter.
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