Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange posted over 23 million contracts in 2019

The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX) traded 23.06 million contracts in 2019, outmanoeuvring its record of 22.26 million contracts traded in 2018, marking 2019 as the most successful year since its 2005 launch, official news agency WAM reported.

DGCX’s clearing house, The Dubai Commodities Clearing Corporation (DCCC), cleared over $866bn in notional value, a statement said.

DGCX also recorded its highest annual Average Open Interest (AOI) – the total number of outstanding contracts at the end of the trading day – in 2019 with 324,803 contracts, rising from 284,736 contracts in 2018.

DGCX’s best performing product in 2019 was its INR Quanto futures contract, with the index pricing of the INR-USD (Indian rupee-US dollar) currency pair trading over 7.7 million contracts, scaling 109 percent year-on-year, while the AOI went up by over 65 percent during the same period.

Meanwhile, over 478,000 gold futures contracts were traded in 2019, up 107 percent year-on-year.

August last year marked DGCX’s best single month of trading in all of 14 years since launch with over 3.2 million contracts while July also saw a record trading volume of over 2.3 million contracts, the statement added.

“DGCX’s second consecutive year of record volumes and all-time high AOI is a testament to our continued efforts to widen investor participation and enhance liquidity in our contracts,” said Les Male, CEO, DGCX.

“This year, we aim to continue our growth trajectory and build on the strong platform we established in 2019. We have a considerable pipeline of products ready to launch, subject to regulatory approval, including Mini-Gold Futures and FX Rolling contracts,” noted Male.

Read: Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange posted over 21.85 million contracts between Jan-Nov

DGCX – a subsidiary of Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC) – commenced trading in November 2005 as the region’s first commodity derivatives exchange, according to the company website.