The New York Mercantile Exchange

The New York Mercantile Exchange established in 1872, is the largest energy futures exchange in the world and the only futures market in the United States that is devoted exclusively to pricing, hedging, and trading industrial commodities.

It was a historical day for the NYMEX on August 3, 1994 when it merged with the Commodity Exchange, Inc (COMEX) to become the world's largest physical commodity futures exchange. The trading is conducted through two divisions

· NYMEX Division on which crude oil, heating oil, gasoline, natural gas, propane, platinum, and palladium trade; and

· COMEX Division on which gold, silver, copper, and the Eurotop 100 stock index trade.

The New York Mercantile Exchange pioneered the development of energy futures and options. It attainted the status of becoming the first exchange to successfully trade energy futures and options with the introduction of the heating oil futures contract in 1978. From a modest 34,000 heating oil contracts traded in 1978, NYMEX energy futures and options volume grew to more than 89 million contracts in the year 2000 and now includes crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, electricity and propane in addition to heating oil.

With the development of energy futures and options contracts nearly 25 years ago, the New York Mercantile Exchange has brought price transparency and risk management to this vital market. The visible and highly competitive daily trading of energy futures and options on the exchange provides a true world reference price for each of the commodities traded. Transactions executed on the Exchange avoid the risk of counterparty default because NYMEX clearinghouse acts as the counterparty to every trade.