Q2 2020 Cross-Commodity Recap

CME Group offers the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes, enabling clients to trade futures, options, cash, and OTC markets, optimize portfolios, analyze data, and manage risk. The Cross-Commodity Recap includes the latest CME Group-Commodity product updates and news on Metals, Energy, and Agricultural markets – it is our curated look at these Commodity products, exclusively for you.

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In light of recent logistical developments in the gold market, COMEX introduced a physically-delivered gold contract with additional delivery and trading functionalities on April 6. This contract enables delivery of Kilo, 100-ounce, and 400-ounce bars in current COMEX-approved depositories for maximum flexibility. Our existing Gold (GC) futures and options contracts remain unchanged.

The new 4GC and benchmark GC contracts are not fungible, meaning that a position in GC cannot be exchanged into an equivalent position in 4GC. However, 4GC is enabled for inter-commodity spread trading against GC on CME Globex, enabling customers to trade 4GC against GC onscreen without execution risk on either leg of the trade.

View the 4GC homepage  

Two additional contracts will complement our existing US Midwest Domestic Hot-Rolled Coil Steel (CRU) futures contract, which represents the Western world’s most liquid flat-rolled steel contract, with more than 3.4M short tons traded on CME Group in 2019.

European Hot-Rolled Coil Steel (Argus) futures

US Midwest Domestic Steel Premium (CRU) futures

More on Steel products

Cushing, Oklahoma is the physical delivery hub for WTI futures contracts, the global benchmark for crude oil. In an environment of global oversupply and lower demand for oil, WTI futures are a critical, centrally cleared risk management tool that ensures convergence between futures and cash markets.

This paper provides an overview of recent market conditions and the significance of Cushing as a trading hub, most notably its pipeline connectivity and storage logistics for WTI.

In this report we discuss:

• The Cushing hub and its capacity
• Why the interconnectivity between a diverse mix of operators is important
• The price movements of the US domestic grades vs. WTI futures

Download the report  

Customers rely on our futures and options markets to manage risk and identify opportunity, making the markets even more important during this unprecedented time. To help participants achieve their goals effectively, we offer several tools.

Use the CME Group Liquidity Tool to analyze current and historical bid-ask spreads, book depth, and cost-to-trade statistics for CME Group products across three distinct global time zones.

In March 2020, we experienced a shock to the market due to the spread of COVID-19. Looking at Soybean Oil futures using the CME Group Liquidity Tool, we can see that bid and offer book depth remained strong and bid/ask spreads widened slightly, but still remained less than two ticks apart during the regular trading day.

Explore the tool here

Since launching on January 13, 2020, Block Cheese futures and options open interest has steadily increased by contract month: Open interest was quickly achieved throughout the curve, including in the December 2020 contract. Combined futures and options open interest surpassed 3,000 in late March, landing at 3,184 at quarter-end.

View contract specifications