Borsa Istanbul achieves world’s highest growth in derivatives market

Borsa Istanbul’s transaction volume in the futures and options market rose by 52 percent in 2015, reaching a record high of 90.3 million contracts, making the Borsa Istanbul Futures and Options Market the fastest-growing in the world. While achieving a five-digit growth rate in electricity futures and a four-digit growth rate in currency options and futures contracts on stock indices, in currency futures, index options and stock options, three-digit growth rates were achieved.

In nominal terms, the value of total transactions set a new record of TL 575 billion ($195.09 billion). Looking into the details of the increase in transactions volume, the options contracts increased tenfold to reach 2.6 million contracts, while futures contracts rose 48 percent to total 87.6 million contracts. The number of open positions per day increased by 83 percent, reaching to a record-high number of 875,314 contracts.

The transaction volume created by foreign investors increased by 122 percent in 2015 compared with 2014. The transaction volume created by domestic investors increased by 33 percent, which is high but modest relative to the level of interest by foreign investors. The share of foreign investors in the total volume of transactions increased by an unprecedented 30 percent.

The futures and options market in 2015 saw product variety remarkably increase, curbing past dependency on one financial product. Products other than index futures increased their share in total volume of transactions, reaching to 20 percent. Currency futures broke a record by raising its share to 18 percent.

The successful high growth in the volume of Borsa Istanbul’s transactions in the futures and options market is attributed to the seminars and educational workshops held to increase investors’ awareness of risk management.