Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange reports best year since launch

The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange, DGCX, today announced that it broke its annual volumes and Average Open Interest, AOI, records last year, making 2019 the most successful year since its launch.

The exchange traded 23.06 million contracts in 2019 ‒ beating its previous record of 22.26 million contracts traded in 2018 ‒ with DGCX’s wholly-owned clearing house, the Dubai Commodities Clearing Corporation, DCCC, clearing over US$866 billion in notional value.

DGCX also recorded its highest yearly AOI in 2019 with 324,803 contracts, up from 284,736 contracts in 2018. Open interest refers to the total number of outstanding contracts at the end of the trading day, and is a strong indicator of the success of the exchange.

“DGCX’s second consecutive year of record volumes and all-time high AOI is a testament to our continued efforts to widen investor participation and enhance liquidity in our contracts. To eclipse our achievements from 2018 is an outstanding feat, and demonstrates the effectiveness of our growth strategy to appeal to a broader range of market users seeking protection and various hedging mechanisms to mitigate their risk,” said Les Male, CEO of DGCX.

The best performing product in 2019 was DGCX’s INR Quanto Futures contract, with the index pricing of the Indian Rupee US dollar currency pair trading over 7.7 million contracts, up 109 percent year-on-year, Y-O-Y, with AOI up by over 65 percent over the same period.

DGCX’s flagship Gold Futures contract also performed well last year, trading over 478,000 contracts, up 107 percent Y-O-Y.

Driven by geopolitical tensions and demonstrating DGCX’s increasing appeal to investors, last July and August saw consecutive record volumes, with over 2.3 and 3.2 million contracts traded respectively; August marked DGCX’s best single month of trading in its 14-year history.

DGCX closed the year with industry plaudits, being awarded “Exchange of the Year – Middle East and Africa” at the Future and Options World, FOW, International Awards 2019 for the second year in a row, and “Exchange of the Year” at the FOW Global Investor MENA Awards 2019.

“This year, we aim to continue our growth trajectory and build on the strong platform we established in 2019. We have a considerable pipeline of products ready to launch, subject to regulatory approval, including Mini-Gold Futures and FX Rolling contracts,” noted Male.