- Open Interest of €STR futures has hit new records:
- 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:
- 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:
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:
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.
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.