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The predecessor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Butter and Egg Board, was formed in 1898 and became the CME in 1919 when it broadened the breadth of its offering—one egg and one butter contract at first—to include a wide range of agricultural products. It was named the Chicago Produce Exchange in 1874.
Since, the CME has continued to diversify its roster of listings and is now best known worldwide for its financial products, including its flagship Eurodollar contract. Four main categories of products trade on the CME: interest rates, stock indexes, foreign exchange and commodities.
The CME is the largest U.S. futures exchange and continues to transition a wide range of products from its open-outcry pit to its electronic platform, Globex, which made its debut in June 1992.
Globex was initially developed with Reuters and first offered futures and options on futures contracts on major currencies. The benchmark three-month Eurodollar futures and options on futures contracts started trading on the platform in August 1992, followed the next year by equity products, including contracts on the S&P 500 index.
A decade later, the CME introduced Globex’s next generation platform, based on France’s NSC trading system as part of an innovative product swap where the Paris Bourse, now part of Euronext, received the CME’s state-of the art clearing system, CLEARING 21.
Once orders for products listed on Globex are placed through front-end applications worldwide, they are immediately acknowledged and matched by the trading engine. Trade reports are immediately disseminated to the trading parties, the CME Clearing House, and the market at large.
Continuing its tradition of product innovation, the CME launched E-mini S&P 500 futures contracts in 1997, with electronic trading during open outcry hours for the first time. The contract quickly became the exchange’s fastest growing product.
Another success came in 1999 with the E-mini NASDAQ-100 futures, while “side-by-side” electronic and pit trading in Eurodollars started during regular hours. In June 2002, the CME added onto Globex e-miNY crude oil and natural gas futures contracts that clear via the New York Mercantile Exchange clearing house.
A milestone for the Chicago exchanges came in November 2003 when the CME began providing clearing services to the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) for commodity, equity and interest rate products. In 2004, the CME became the world’s largest clearing organization for futures.
Further endorsing electronic trading, a special shareholder meeting approved in the spring of 2004 transitioning the front two Eurodollar futures products onto Globex.
The CME regularly upgrades Globex by adding patent-pending functionality, such as the Implied Pricing Functionality for Eurodollars, which allows electronic calendar spread trading for Eurodollar futures. Enhanced options functionality for electronically traded CME Eurodollars facilitates trading of complex combination and spread trades typically used with short-term interest rate options on futures.
The CME is also leveraging its electronic access to become a global exchange, setting up Globex communications hubs in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Britain, Gibraltar, Italy and now Singapore. The exchange has developed two Japanese monthly and seasonal CME Weather contracts for the Tokyo and Osaka exchanges, based on the Pacific Rim Index.