€STR Volumes and Market Share February 2025

  • Open Interest of €STR futures has hit new records:
    • Open Interest is now over €1.5Trn, and ICE OI has reached over 1 million contracts.
  • Eurex are on top in terms of volumes traded, but ICE were close to wrestling top spot in February.
  • Eurex had a 49% market share by volume in February 2025, whilst 68% of Open Interest sits with ICE.

€STR Futures

Our €STR Dashboard summarises key liquidity attributes in this growing market:

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  • September 2024 remains as the all time volume record, with February 2025 recording the highest volumes in the past five months.
  • February 2025 saw the largest volumes outside of a roll month, reaching 5.8 million contracts / €5.8Trn notional equivalent.
  • €STR accounted for 16% of all EUR STIR trading in February, a new all-time record. Is this the first sign that market participants are beginning to show a stronger preference to trade €STR?
  • Eurex saw more than 3m contracts trade again in January 2025, before dropping back to 2.8m in February.
  • ICE volumes, however, increased from January to February. That looks significant given that both CME and Eurex saw volumes decrease month-on-month.
  • CME continues to see steady volumes, although they are marginally below where they were last Summer. Open Interest has recovered well and is now approaching levels last seen in September.
  • For market share in February 2025, Eurex saw 49%, ICE 48% and CME the remaining 4% of volumes – with ICE reaching their second highest ever share of monthly volumes.
  • EURIBOR traded 31m contracts in February 2025. Combining the €STR volumes with EURIBOR means that ICE still enjoy an 86% market share for all EUR-denominated STIR activity.

Open Interest

CCPView provides all the data we need on Open Interest for €STR futures:

Open Interest in EUR Millions of ESTR Futures. Source: CCPView
  • I like this chart. It surely shows the success of €STR trading in futures markets, and the enthusiastic support that the market is giving to these (relatively new) contracts.
  • New records abound on the chart!
  • Combined Open Interest is now over 1.5m contracts / €1.5Trn notional equivalent. A “proper” market.
  • ICE have seen much of this growth, adding 200,000 in Open Interest since our November blog, to over 1m contracts.
  • ICE had a nice announcement on LinkedIn regarding the 1 million contract milestone recently:
  • Eurex OI also continues to grow, reaching 438k contracts in February, nearly doubling in the six months since September.
  • The split of Open Interest as at February 2025: 68% at ICE, 29% at Eurex and 3% at CME. Both ICE and Eurex appear to have taken OI market share from CME since my previous blog resulting in the smallest share of OI that CME have had in €STR futures.

EURIBOR

No change that I can see in EURIBOR trading. It continues to dominate EUR STIR future volumes:

EURIBOR volumes in € m notional equivalents. Source: CCPView

January volumes in EURIBOR were close to the October and November 2024 records. Interestingly, EURIBOR volumes decreased from Jan to Feb, but €STR increased.

  • The Eurex market share in 2025 so far was 6.3% (January) and 7.2% (February), a small increase compared to Q4 2024 (5.4%).

€STR Options

The sole €STR option was done back in August. I find it surprising that there has been no activity since. The wait continues for a market to develop in Exchange Traded Options. €STR options did manage to trade over €1bn in OTC for the first time in January 2025. Maybe that is a precursor of things to come:

EUR Swaptions and Caps/Floors reported to US SDRs. Source: SDRView

Swaps

The biggest news in Swaps is that the Active Account requirements have been proposed, and that they could significantly impact volumes (up to 12,500 trades per year, covering 3.5% of EUR swaps). My latest blog estimates it could account for around €840bn in notional tied to EURIBOR swaps. I have not yet run the numbers for €STR – please let me know if that would be helpful in the comments below.

€STR Swap Volumes in €m. Source: CCPView

LCH SwapClear has a 97% market share in €STR. Swap volumes hit their highest levels since January 2024 at the start of the year, but have since pulled back sharply. January 2025 saw the second largest amount of €STR swaps ever traded.

In Summary

  • Record Open Interest & Market Share: €STR futures Open Interest surpassed €1.5T, with ICE holding 68% and Eurex leading in traded volumes at 49% in February 2025.
  • Robust Trading Volumes: February saw the highest €STR volumes in five months at 5.8M contracts (€5.8T notional), capturing a record 16% of EUR STIR trading.
  • Swaps & Options: €STR swap volumes spiked in January 2025 before declining in February. Proposed Active Account Rules are likely to continue to impact swaps markets. €STR options remain inactive since August 2024.

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