The Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM) announced today that December 2012 trading volume averaged 110,110 contracts per day, down 3.8% from November 2012.
Despite the increase in volume of two major TOCOM contracts, Gold (up 5.6% to 58,844 contracts) and Rubber (up 4.8% to 9,184 contracts), average daily volume decreased with significant declines in most other major contracts on a month-over-month basis. Crude Oil was down 17.3% to 4,458 contracts, Gasoline was down 28.3% to 8,121 contracts and the Gold Mini was down 17.2% to 9,257 contracts.
The market slowed during a time of spreading global financial instability, as well as Christmas and the year-end holiday, which apparently affected the TOCOM market.
Open interest at the end of December for all listed contracts totaled 353,513, a decrease of 1,548 (0.44%) from the prior month.
2012 annual trading volume at TOCOM amounted to 25,479,111 contracts, down 19.5% on a year-on-year basis. The total transaction value was 76,794,781,057,000 (76 tril. 794 bln. 781 mil. 57 thousand) yen, down 20% from the previous year.
2012 saw rising concern among market participants with a widespread slowdown of the global economy. Since April, risk aversion became the prominent market sentiment and consequentially, trade at TOCOM thinned. As a result, TOCOM’s yearly volume did not continue the recovery seen in 2011. At the end of the year, open interest for all listed commodities increased by 29,712 contracts (9.18%) to 353,513 contracts from the end of the previous year.
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