Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange breaks annual volumes record

Photo used for representative purpose only

The Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange (DGCX) has announced that it has rounded off a highly successful 2018 by breaking its annual volumes record, trading 22.26 million contracts, up 28 per cent from the previous year.

The total value of the contracts was $474.94 billion, beating its previous highest value of $448 billion traded in 2013. Average daily volumes also finished the year at an all-time high, reaching 86,615 lots.

The exchange achieved a strong start to 2018, recording 5,541,732 lots traded in Q1, valued at $129 billion. Building on this momentum in May, it reported its best month since inception, recording its highest monthly volume with 2,163,598 contracts traded, valued at $46.1 billion. The exchange's best quarter was in Q3 with 5,863,276 lots traded.

In March, the exchange launched the GCC's first and the world's only exchange traded Shariah-compliant spot gold contract (DGSG). The exchange also introduced new technology, upgrading its trading and clearing solution from Cinnober to an enhanced version of the TRADExpress platform, streamlining its business development capabilities and improving bandwidth usage and latency performance.

"Throughout the year, the DGCX has achieved spectacular growth and broken numerous records. While geopolitical uncertainty and other factors beyond our control have contributed to our remarkable performance, it has been our hard work and efforts from within that have had the largest bearing on our success," said Les Male, CEO of DGCX.

"Our mandate in 2018 was to widen investor participation and enhance liquidity. We have done this by strengthening our capabilities and diversifying our product range, offering investors access to a wide range of products on a robust, fully regulated and secure platform, whilst continuing to hold innovation at the core of what we do," Male noted.

The best performing asset classes in 2018 were the Indian Rupee (INR) product suite and the G6 Currency futures. INR volumes increased by 25 per cent from 2017, driven mainly by increasing hedging appetite in volatile markets, while volumes in G6 futures grew nine per cent to reach 595,491 contracts.

"It was a particularly busy year for INR trading as the Indian rupee touched record lows, with investors seeking safety in the USD in response to global economic and political headwinds," added Male.

- business@khaleejtimes.com