Derivatives marketplace CME Group has recently published its market statistics for the month of August. Overall, trading has improved on a monthly comparison for the trading provider, but the performance did not hold up year on year, the data shows.

For the month of August, the average daily volume traded across the CME Group was 16.4 million contracts, with open interest at the end of the month coming in at 101 contracts. The average daily volume traded in July was 13.6 million contracts. Therefore, trading increased by 20.1 per cent overall.

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The average daily volume for the metals asset class was 1 million contracts in August. This is stronger than the previous month, when 725,000 contracts were trading, by 37.9 per cent.

In fact, the average daily volume for equity index, interest rate, options, agricultural and energy asset classes all achieved a month on month uptick. However, Foreign exchange (forex) trading was down year on year.

Specifically, the number of forex contracts traded on average per day was 729,000. This is a fall from the daily average of 755,000 contracts in July by 3.4 per cent. When measuring August’s ADV for forex trading, it has also declined by 11 per cent, as August of 2019 had an average daily FX volume of 821,000.

Taking a look at the data, all of the asset classes posted a drop in volumes against the same period of the previous year, in August 2019. Metals were the only asset to record a yearly uptick in volumes, climbing by 15 per cent.

CME Group Sees Surge in Silver Trading

It was metals, in particular, that drove trading volumes for the CME Group, with the derivatives marketplace noting record metals average daily volumes during August. In the month, the number of silver futures trading each day on average was stronger by 61 per cent year on year.

However, interest rates, equities, energy, forex and agricultural all decreased last month when compared against August 2019.