CHICAGO, March 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CME Group, the world's largest and most diverse derivatives exchange, today announced February volume averaged 13.2 million contracts per day, up 25 percent from February 2007. Total volume exceeded 264 million contracts for the month, of which a record 82 percent was traded electronically. Total electronic volume averaged 10.8 million contracts per day, up 34 percent from the prior February.

CME Group E-mini equity index volume averaged 3.0 million contracts per day, up 55 percent compared with February 2007. CME Group interest rate volume averaged 8.5 million contracts per day, up 19 percent. CME Group commodities and alternative investments volume averaged a record of one million plus contracts per day for the first time, up 19 percent. CME Group foreign exchange volume averaged 566,000 contracts per day, up 12 percent.

Additional monthly volume records reached in February 2008 include NYMEX energy and metals volume on the CME Globex® trading platform, up 40 percent to average 963,000 contracts per day, and electronic commodities and alternative investments volume, up 66 percent to 626,000 contracts per day. CME Group electronic options increased 72 percent to a record 448,000 contracts per day, representing a record 22 percent of total options volume. Record electronic Eurodollar options volume nearly tripled from February 2007 to average 245,000 contracts per day, representing a record 21 percent of total Eurodollar options volume.

All references to volume and rate per contract information in the text of this document assume combined legacy CME and legacy CBOT volumes and exclude our non-traditional TRAKRS products, for which CME Group receives significantly lower clearing fees than other CME Group products, and Swapstream products.

Legacy e-CBOT products reached a record 5.5 million contracts per day, in their first full month of trading on the CME Globex electronic platform. Further, individual product records were broken in 2-year U.S. Treasury notes, 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds, 5-year U.S. Treasury notes, soybeans, soybean oil, soybean meal, electronic corn, wheat, rough rice, and oats.

  CME GROUP MONTHLY AVERAGE DAILY VOLUME
  (In thousands)
                            February 2008    February 2007   Percent Change
  PRODUCT LINE
  Interest Rates                8,485            7,109             19%
  E-minis                       2,964            1,917             55%
  Equity Standard                 151              156             -3%
  Foreign Exchange                566              508             12%
  Commodities and Alt. Inv.*    1,041              878             19%
     Total                     13,207           10,568             25%

  VENUE
  Open Outcry                   2,177            2,338             -7%
  CME Globex and e-CBOT        10,803            8,059             34%
  Privately Negotiated            227              171             33%

  *CME Group Commodities and Alternative Investments product line includes
   the legacy CME Commodities and Alternative Investments product line and
   the legacy CBOT Agricultural product line and Metals, Energy and Other
   product line.



  CME GROUP ROLLING THREE-MONTH AVERAGES

  Average Rate Per Contract
  (In dollars, and calculated from combined average daily volumes for
  entire period)

                     By Product Line                      By Venue
                                       Commod-
                                       ities                        Priv-
  3-Month Int-         Equity           and                         ately
  Period  erest   E-   Stand- Foreign   Alt.         Open   Elec-   Negot-
  Ending  Rates  minis  ard   Exchange  Inv.  Total Outcry  tronic  iated

  Jan-08  0.509  0.699 1.478   0.964   1.096  0.635  0.510  0.622   2.947
  Dec-07  0.530  0.687 1.427   0.985   1.074  0.648  0.517  0.629   3.057
  Nov-07  0.523  0.671 1.442   0.972   1.070  0.636  0.503  0.623   3.050
  Oct-07  0.520  0.663 1.454   0.956   1.056  0.623  0.474  0.618   2.906


  Average Daily Volume
  (In thousands, average daily volumes combined for entire period)

                     By Product Line                      By Venue
                                       Commod-
                                       ities                        Priv-
  3-Month Int-         Equity           and                         ately
  Period  erest   E-   Stand- Foreign   Alt.          Open  Elec-   Negot-
  Ending  Rates  minis  ard   Exchange  Inv.  Total  Outcry tronic  iated

  Feb-08  7,536  3,137  184     558     882  12,297  2,209  9,880    208
  Jan-08  7,390  3,276  187     583     812  12,247  2,241  9,811    195
  Dec-07  6,290  2,817  166     561     740  10,574  1,876  8,528    169
  Nov-07  6,847  2,935  173     599     744  11,298  2,149  8,979    169

CME Group (http://www.cmegroup.com/) is the world's largest and most diverse derivatives exchange. Formed by the 2007 merger of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc. (CME) and CBOT Holdings, Inc. (CBOT), CME Group serves the risk management needs of customers around the globe. As an international marketplace, CME Group brings buyers and sellers together on the CME Globex electronic trading platform and on its trading floors. CME Group offers the widest range of benchmark products available across all major asset classes, including futures and options based on interest rates, equity indexes, foreign exchange, agricultural commodities, and alternative investment products such as weather and real estate. CME Group is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ under the symbol "CME".

The Globe logo, CME, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CME Group, Globex and E-mini, are trademarks of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. CBOT and Chicago Board of Trade are trademarks of the Board of Trade of the City of Chicago, Inc. TRAKRS and Total Return Asset Contracts are trademarks of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. These trademarks are used herein under license. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Further information about CME Group and its products can be found at http://www.cmegroup.com/.

Statements in this news release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements. Among the factors that might affect our performance are: our ability to successfully integrate the businesses of CME Holdings and CBOT Holdings, including the fact that such integration may be more difficult, time consuming or costly than expected and revenues following the merger may be lower than expected; increasing competition by foreign and domestic entities, including increased competition from new entrants into our markets and consolidation of existing entities; our ability to keep pace with rapid technological developments, including our ability to complete the development and implementation of the enhanced functionality required by our customers; our ability to continue introducing competitive new products and services on a timely, cost-effective basis, including through our electronic trading capabilities, and our ability to maintain the competitiveness of our existing products and services; our ability to adjust our fixed costs and expenses if our revenues decline; our ability to continue to generate revenues from our processing services provided to third parties; our ability to maintain existing customers and attract new ones; our ability to expand and offer our products in foreign jurisdictions; changes in domestic and foreign regulations; changes in government policy, including policies relating to common or directed clearing; the costs associated with protecting our intellectual property rights and our ability to operate our business without violating the intellectual property rights of others; our ability to generate revenue from our market data that may be reduced or eliminated by the growth of electronic trading; changes in our rate per contract due to shifts in the mix of the products traded, the trading venue and the mix of customers (whether the customer receives member or non-member fees or participates in one of our various incentive programs) and the impact of our tiered pricing structure; the ability of our financial safeguards package to adequately protect us from the credit risks of clearing members; changes in price levels and volatility in the derivatives markets and in underlying fixed income, equity, foreign exchange and commodities markets; economic, political, geopolitical and market conditions; natural disasters and other catastrophes, our ability to accommodate increases in trading volume and order transaction traffic without failure or degradation of performance of our systems; our ability to execute our growth strategy and maintain our growth effectively; our ability to manage the risks and control the costs associated with our acquisition, investment and alliance strategy; our ability to continue to generate funds and/or manage our indebtedness to allow us to continue to invest in our business; industry and customer consolidation; decreases in trading and clearing activity; the imposition of a transaction tax on futures and options on futures transactions; and the seasonality of the futures business. More detailed information about factors that may affect our performance may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, which is available in the Investor Relations section of the CME Group Web site. We undertake no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

CME-G

SOURCE: CME Group

CONTACT: media, Anita Liskey, +1-312-466-4613, or William Parke,
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