As previously announced, CME will launch trading in X-Funds futures contracts on Monday, October 4th.

These contracts are short-dated futures, each with a two-week lifespan.  At any given time, there may be futures on any of five different funds trading, denoted by product codes X1, X2, X3, X4 or X5.

 For example, suppose on October 4th, the X1 and X2 contracts are listed, with an expiration date of Friday October 15th.  On the following Monday, two new contracts will be listed, again with the designation of X1 and X2 for expiration on Friday October 29th.  Because of this behavior, X-Funds will be listed as "futures-to-the-day", and each contract will be identified not just by its year and month, but also by the day of the month.

A sample SPAN file illustrating the X-Funds is now available at:

ftp.cme.com/pub/span/data/ccl/test/x-funds.pa2

This file is for business date August 23rd, and contains data for a hypothetical X1 contract expiring on September 3, 2004.  There is also a sample intercommodity spread record involving the X1 product, with priority number 6.

For more information, please see New Product Advisory 04-23.