Intercontinental Exchange, a leading global provider technology and data, announced that ICE’s €uro Short Term Rate (€STR) futures hit open interest of over 500,000 contracts on September 11, 2024.

ICE’s €STR futures and options clear alongside 16.2 million lots of open interest in Euribor, the benchmark for managing short term euro-related interest rate risk. Open interest across ICE’s interest rate complex is up 14% year-over-year (y/y) at over 25 million contracts.

Meanwhile average daily volume (ADV) across the interest rate portfolio was up 55% y/y, as at the end of August 2024, including Euribor ADV up 50%, SONIA ADV up 56% and Gilts ADV up 48%.

“The health of our €STR market is being driven by end user demand that is benefiting from deeper liquidity available at ICE,” said Caterina Caramaschi, Vice President, Financial Derivatives at ICE. “We’d like to thank all of our market participants for their continued support in developing our €STR futures and we are pleased to see the first €STR option trade”.

“As the only exchange globally to offer liquid multi-currency short-term interest rate products, we are committed to building ICE’s franchise to provide even more tools for managing interest rate risk as the market continues to develop,” continued Caramaschi.

By trading and clearing €STR at ICE, customers can benefit from margin offsets as high as 90% against Euribor. Euribor is the key euro-dominated interest rate benchmark, based on the average interest rate at which Eurozone banks offer unsecured short-term lending to one another while €STR reflects the wholesale euro unsecured overnight borrowing costs of banks located in the euro area.

Customers are utilizing the inter-contract spread ICE offers for trading the difference between Euribor and €STR, designed so market participants have the flexibility and liquidity to transition in and out of the contract as they do in over-the-counter markets.

ICE is home to a multi-currency interest rate derivatives offering including Euribor, SONIA the U.K. benchmark, SARON the Swiss benchmark and Gilts the benchmark for the U.K. government bond yield curve. On September 11, 2024, SONIA futures hit record open interest of 2.4 million contracts.

Source: ICE