Tokyo Commodity Exchange, Inc. ("TOCOM" or the "Exchange") announced
today that the Exchange has decided to aim for an extension of trading
hours for the night session until 4:30 (JST) from September 21, 2010.
Currently, TOCOM's trading hours are from 17:00 to 23:00 for the night
session and from 9:00 to 15:30 for the day session. Trading hours for
rubber futures will not be changed from 9:00-15:30 and 17:00-19:00.
TOCOM's listed products are internationally traded commodities and their
prices fluctuate while TOCOM's market is closed. Therefore, by keeping
its market open longer, the Exchange aims to offer more trading
opportunities to market participants, which will improve the overall
convenience of the market.
TOCOM decided to extend the trading session beyond 23:00 because the
overlap in trading hours with the New York market could greatly benefit
arbitrage traders and the dollar-yen exchange rate, which is thought to
be one of the factors that contributes to increasing gold trading
volumes, tends to fluctuate more around that time. During these hours,
individual investors are also relatively active in trading FX and CFDs
over the internet. TOCOM set the closing time of the night session at
4:30 to coincide with the closing of New York crude oil floor trading.
In the months ahead, TOCOM will take all necessary measures for the
extension to ensure a smooth transition, including verifying the
stability and assessing the performance of the trading system, as well
as reviewing procedures in case of system failure.
The Exchange has also examined the possibility of extending the trading
session into the break time (i.e: from 15:30 until 17:00), as it
overlaps with the Singapore and London markets, but decided to maintain
the current break. TOCOM determined that it would be difficult to change
this break time because of certain constraints, including the fact that
the day session cannot close later than 15:30 in relation to publishing
the reference prices of ETFs and investment funds linked to TOCOM
markets, and the fact that TOCOM shares with the other three commodity
exchanges in Japan a common pool calculation system for customer margins.
About Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM)
Tokyo Commodity Exchange, Inc. (TOCOM)is Japan's largest
commodity futures exchange with a trading volume of 29 million
contracts, representing an 81% market share, in 2009, and one of the
most prominent exchanges in Asia. Futures and Options contracts on a
variety of industrial products are traded (i.e.: gold, silver, platinum
and palladium in the precious metals market; crude oil, gasoline and
kerosene in the oil market; aluminum and rubber). TOCOM was established
in 1984 as a result of a merger between the Tokyo Textile Exchange,
founded in 1951, the Tokyo Rubber Exchange and the Tokyo Gold Exchange.
TOCOM was demutualized in December 2008 and went live with a new trading
system based on the suite of trading and clearing platforms provided by
the NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. in May 2009.
Tokyo Commodity Exchange, Inc.
Keiko Koyama, +81-3-3661-7917
koyama@tocom.or.jp
Fax:
+81-3-3664-0089