White Collar | HKEX is third time lucky in launching gold futures but trading is starting to slip
Average daily turnover of the yuan and US dollar gold futures have declined by 50 per cent and 30 per cent respectively in August, compared with July
Finally – the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing is third time lucky in launching gold trading.
The two contracts have a reported a combined 27,122 contracts, or 904 per day, in the first 30 days of trading between their launch on July 10 and last Friday.
The levels have not been excessively high but they showed a decent beginning when compared with six other London Metal Exchange metal futures contracts traded in Hong Kong, which on average only has one or two contract traded.
They were also a far cry from two pervious launches of gold futures. The two products, one traded in US dollars and the other in yuan, marked the third attempt by the local stock exchange to jump into gold trading.
The last time HKEX launched a gold product was during the financial crisis in October 2008. The contract was scrapped in March 2015 owing to poor turnover, where there were almost zero trading throughout the short-lived period.
The Futures Exchange, now a unit of HKEX, first traded gold futures in the 1980s. But that was scrapped in the mid-1990s due to a lack of interest.