The New York Mercantile Exchange Inc. is migrating its after-hours Access trading to the CME Globex electronic platform and adding physically delivered gas contracts to the mix, as its nemesis, the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), reports setting more trading records in July.

Nymex has announced that its physically delivered energy futures contracts will join its financially-settled energy contracts on the CME Globex electronic trading platform during its regular open outcry trading hours, beginning on Sept. 4 for trade date Sept. 5. The contracts will trade side by side in conjunction with Nymex trading floor hours, and they will be fungible with the floor-traded Nymex energy contracts.

Nymex began trading the financially-settled standard-sized and emiNY energy futures contracts on the electronic exchange on June 12 (see Daily GPI, June 12). More recently the exchange said it would migrate its after-hours energy futures contracts from Nymex Access to the CME Globex electronic trading platform, which operates virtually 24 hours each trading day. The switch was expected to take place on Sunday for Monday’s trade day.

The affected contracts include the Nymex crude oil, natural gas, heating oil and gasoline futures contracts. They will be listed for the full curve, or all months corresponding with the underlying full-sized futures contract and will be available for trading from 6 p.m. ET Sundays through 5:15 p.m. ET Fridays, with a 45-minute break each day between 5:15 p.m. ET and 6 p.m. ET.

Meanwhile, Nymex announced Thursday that it set daily volume records for total energy futures and emiNY natural gas futures traded electronically on CME Globex on Aug. 2. Total energy futures volume reached 154,377 contracts, topping the 140,380 contracts traded on July 19. The emiNY natural gas futures contract traded a record 37,071 contracts, surpassing the 33,364 contracts traded on Aug. 1.

Also, last week, ICE, the reason for Nymex’s hasty ramping up of electronic trading on the Chicago exchange’s electronic platform, reported record activity during the month of July. Average daily volume (ADV) for ICE Futures, its London-based regulated futures subsidiary, totaled 385,806 contracts for a seventh consecutive monthly ADV record, an increase of 125.5% over July 2005. The overall total volume for July was a record 8,101,932 contracts, or 125.5% above the total monthly volume of 3,592,177 contracts in July 2005.

ICE said it average daily commissions in its over-the-counter (OTC) business segment in July rose 85.9% over July 2005, to a record $593,821.

The electronic exchange reported record-level volumes in its Brent and WTI , adding up to a greater than 50% market share in global crude futures as measured by volume of light sweet crude oil, the company said.

ICE Brent Crude futures monthly volume totaled 3,783,010 contracts, a 43% increase over July 2005. ADV was 180,143 contracts. The ICE WTI Crude futures contract established a monthly volume record in July of 2,591,243 contracts and a new ADV record of 123,393 contracts for the month, an increase of 6.6% over the previous ADV record set in June 2006.

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