Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEx) will introduce China CITIC Bank, China Coal and Jiangxi Copper options on Monday, 3 September this year.
The initial contract months will be September, October, November and December 2007 and March 2008. The contract size for all three new option classes will be 1,000 shares (one board lot) of the underlying securities and strike prices will be set with reference to the closing price of the underlying securities on 31 August. The strike price intervals will be as follows:
|
Strike Price |
Strike Price Interval |
|
$2 to $5 |
$0.20 |
|
$5 to $10 |
$0.50 |
|
$10 to $20 |
$1.00 |
|
$20 to $50 |
$2.00 |
The underlying securities for all three new option classes are H shares. From 3 September, HKEx’s derivatives market will offer 48 stock options classes, including 17 with H shares as underlying securities and eight with red chips as underlying securities.
The average daily trading volume of stock options at HKEx was 223,300 contracts in July this year, an increase of 278 per cent from the average daily trading volume of 59,131 contracts during the same period a year ago. Open interest was 4,780,770 contracts at the end of July, compared with 1,455,967 contracts at the end of July 2006, a rise of 228 per cent. There was also a 158 per cent rise in total futures and options trading volume last month from the same period last year. Additional derivatives market, or futures and options, statistics are on the HKEx website at: http://www.hkex.com.hk/eng/stat/dmstat/derivativesMarket.htm.
The latest information on the futures and options contracts traded on HKEx's derivatives market, including contract specifications, is available on the HKEx website at: http://www.hkex.com.hk/eng/prod/drprod/dmproducts.htm.