Commodity market disruptions have impacted trading activity in a host of derivative contracts, and caused challenges for many different market participants across 2022. To help illustrate some of the most dramatic changes in trading behaviors, FIA has compiled a list of active commodity derivative contracts that have seen significant spikes in open interest over the prior year.
One of the most noteworthy trends on this list is tremendous volatility in European Energy Exchange (EEX) natural gas contracts when comparing 2021 activity to 2022, driven in part by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and related disruptions to global supply chains.
FIA's data analysis ranked exchange-traded commodity derivatives contracts with over 100,000 units of open interest (OI) as of 31 May, and contracts that also posted year-over-year increases of 50% or more in OI compared with May 2021 levels. The result was 28 total commodity contracts that met these two thresholds – and of those, EEX commands three of the top five spikes in OI globally.
Each of these three EEX contracts is tied to natural gas traded via the PEG Nord hub, and the trio has seen between 4X and 8X growth in open interest over the prior year. Additionally, the list of the 28 most volatile contracts ranked by FIA also includes two EEX contracts tied to Netherlands-based TTF natural gas. These TTF contracts on EEX have seen significant volatility, with open interest more than doubling over the prior year.
Outside of these EEX natural gas contracts, other energy-related products also make the list of top open interest changes over the prior year. These include New York Mercantile Exchange futures tied to Louisiana's Henry Hub, ICE Futures US options on North American Natural Gas and Power and both Low Sulfur Fuel Oil and Bitumen futures on Shanghai Futures Exchange.
The full list of global commodity derivative contracts with the largest changes in open interest is below. If you have difficulty reading the table, please download the PDF version.
