The Dubai Gold &Commodities Exchange (DGCX) 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 (ADV) 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 reported its best month since inception, recording its highest monthly volume with 2,163,598 contracts traded, valued at $46.1 billion. With the Exchanges best quarter coming in Q3 with 5,863,276 lots traded.

In March, the Exchange launched the GCC’s first and the world’s only exchange traded Shari’ah Compliant Spot Gold contract (DGSG). The Exchange also introduced new cutting-edge 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.

Les Male, CEO of DGCX, commented: “Throughout the year, the DGCX has achieved spectacular growth and broken numerous records, consistently demonstrating why it is the leading derivatives exchange in the Middle East. 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.

“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.”

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 9 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 $in response to global economic and political headwinds. While the foreign exchange market as a whole witnessed volatility on the back of global trade discussions, changing market dynamics and developments across the UK, USA and Europe pushed ourG6 currency portfolio to all time highs,” added Male.

The Exchange closed the year by being named ‘EMEA Exchange of the Year’ for the first time at the Future & Options World (FOW) Global Investor Awards 2018 held in London. For the second consecutive year, it also picked up the ‘Exchange of the Year’ accolade at the prestigious Global Investor Mena Awards 2018.

“We are well-positioned for further growth in 2019 and have a considerable pipeline already. We will be launching new contracts and services over the next year that will appeal to both our international and local participants” concluded Male. – TradeArabia News Service