Xinhua News Agency: The SHFE Expands Products for Continuous Trading Program from Dec. 26

Updated on Dec 22,2014

By Chen Yunfu and Yao Yujie

The Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) announced on December 22 that it will expand the products for the Continuous Trading Program, or the Night Trading Session, to steel rebar, hot-rolled coils, natural rubber, and bitumen from December 26 onwards, thus making the night trading cover almost all its major futures products.

The Continuous Trading Program is to add the trading time at night apart from the normal trading in the daytime. On the one hand, it opens the trading during the trading time of European and American markets, thus promoting the timely interaction between domestic and foreign market prices; on the other hand, it conforms to the risk management demand of the real economy and helps to expand the width and depth of the futures market to serve the real economy.

The SHFE took the lead to launch precious metal and nonferrous metals futures products for the Continuous Trading Program in China in 2013. The SHFE said that this trading program will be expanded to steel rebar, hot-rolled coils, natural rubber, and bitumen futures products from December 26 onwards, thus making the Continuous Trading Program cover all its major listed futures products on the whole.

According to the SHFE, the opening time for the night trading of these four products is 21:00, which conforms to that of other products launched by the SHFE for the Continuous Trading Program; the closing time of bitumen, steel rebar, and hot-rolled coils is 01:00 of the next day, which is the same with that of nonferrous metals products, while that of natural rubber is 23:00.

Li Qiang, President of Xinhu Futures Research Institute, said that the introduction of these four products into the Continuous Trading Program will provide investors with a platform to avoid overnight position-holding risks and also offer more flexible choices for the hedging of industry clients and help to reduce the risk exposure in the trading of enterprises.