Beginning of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange

Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (CME) is the largest futures exchange in the United States and the second largest exchange in the world for the trading of futures and options on futures.

It was founded as a not-for-profit corporation in 1898. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chicago Mercantile Exchange

Holdings Inc., a Delaware corporation. When in December 2002 the Class A shares of its parent company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CME it became the first publicly traded U.S. financial exchange. It is a Self-regulatory organization regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)

It is a marketplace for global risk management. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange brings together buyers and sellers of derivatives products, which trade on its trading floors, on its GLOBEX electronic trading platform and through privately negotiated transactions.

Futures and options provide a way to protect against and profit from price changes in financial instruments and physical commodities. CME also owns its own clearing house and is able to guarantee, clear and settle every contract traded through its exchange.

Product Areas

· Interest rates · Stock indexes · Foreign exchange · Commodities

CME has the largest futures and options on the futures open interest of any exchange in the world. Open interest is the number of outstanding contracts at the close of the trading day and a leading indicator of liquidity.

In the year 2002, a record 558.4 million contracts with an underlying value of $328.6 trillion changed hands at CME, representing the largest notional value traded on any futures exchange in the world. In addition, CME moves about $1.8 billion per day in settlement payments and manage $27.4 billion in collateral deposits.