Open interest in listed credit futures rose year on year at all three exchanges in October, even as trading volumes fell back after the September roll.
Positions in listed credit futures continued to build in October. Open interest was higher than a year earlier at Eurex, CME and Cboe. Trading volumes eased after September’s quarterly roll, which inflates activity as expiring positions move into the next contract.
Eurex
Month-end open interest in Eurex’s euro-denominated credit futures reached €4.24bn at the end of October. That is up 25% from September and 91% from a year earlier, and 7% below the April peak of €4.55bn.
High yield led the way. Open interest in the euro high-yield contract (FEHY) more than doubled from October 2025, to €1.62bn. The euro corporate SRI contract (FECX) rose 82%, to €2.63bn.
Average daily volume fell to €291m from €667m in September, which was a roll month. It was still more than four times October 2025’s €63m.
Source: exchange statistics
CME
At CME, average daily volume in dollar credit futures was $233m in October, 20% lower than a year earlier. Average daily open interest was $1.68bn, up 147% on October 2025. That is slightly below September’s $1.71bn and the May peak of $1.91bn.
Volume shifted from high yield towards duration-hedged investment grade. The duration-hedged investment-grade contract (DHB) accounted for 62% of October volume, and its daily volume nearly doubled year on year, to $144m. Combined volume in the two high-yield contracts (HYB and DHY) more than halved, to $53m a day. Over the first ten months of 2026, CME’s average daily volume has been roughly double its level a year earlier.
Source: exchange statistics
Loan futures make a quiet start
On 14 September CME launched futures on the S&P UBS USD Liquid Leveraged Loan Index. They are the first credit futures at any of the three exchanges to reference loans rather than bonds.
Early trading has been thin. The contract averaged about $21,000 a day in October, with average daily open interest of about $400,000.
Cboe
Cboe’s average daily volume was $152m in October, 2% higher than a year earlier. Average daily open interest rose 24%, to $1.80bn, but remains below August’s peak of $2.51bn.
The growth is in high yield. Open interest in the iBoxx high-yield contract (IBHY) rose 48% year on year, to $1.12bn, which is 62% of the Cboe total. The investment-grade contract (IBIG) was 2% lower, at $660m.
Cboe now reports average daily open interest rather than month-end figures. The numbers here are on that basis, so they are not directly comparable with the Cboe figures in The DESK’s September report.
Source: exchange statistics
Across the venues
Eurex remains the largest venue by open interest by a wide margin. That holds even allowing for the difference between its month-end measure and the daily averages reported by CME and Cboe.
Source: exchange statistics
Still a fraction of CDS
Gross notional outstanding in over-the-counter credit default swaps reported to the CFTC was $8.34tn on 23 October. On a rough comparison, open interest in credit futures across all three exchanges comes to about 0.1% of that. ICE, which is the largest CDS clearer, appears to have quietly shelved its own credit futures product.
©Markets Media Europe 2026
