London Metal Exchange
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The London Metal Exchange or LME is the futures exchange with the world's largest market in options and futures contracts on base and other metals. As the LME offers contracts with daily expiry dates up to three months from trade date, along with longer dated contracts, it also allows for cash trading. It offers hedging, worldwide reference pricing and the option of physical delivery to settle contracts.
It is located at 56 Leadenhall Street, London.
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[edit] History
The London Metal Market and Exchange Company was founded in 1877 but the market traces its origins back to 1571 and the opening of the Royal Exchange. At first only copper was traded, lead and zinc were soon added but only gained official trading status in 1920. The exchange was closed over WW II and did not re-open until 1952. Other metals traded extended to include aluminium (1978), nickel (1979) and aluminium alloy (1992). The exchange also started trading plastics in 2005. The total value of the trade is around $8,500 billion annually.
Steel futures started trading in April 2008
[edit] Facilities
If you want to produce or to trade copper or tin, or whatever listed on the LME, you can sell the metal to one of the many big warehouse of the LME, all over the world, and receive a warrant. This is a way to share the cost of these warehouses beetween the many industry participants and make it more efficient, to compete against other products.
The LME issues twice a week detailed figures on how many tons of each metal is in its warehouses, which helps producers and consumers make correct business decisions.
[edit] Markets
There is constant inter-office trading but some trading is still done by open outcry in the Ring. There is a morning and an afternoon trade, where each of the eight metal contracts are traded in two blocks with a five minute session for each contract (the sessions last from 11.40 until 13.15 and from 15.10 until 16.35, each session includes a ten minute break). The second trading block in the morning is key to setting the Daily Official Exchange rates. After the official trades there is fifteen minutes of "kerb" trading. Trades are in futures, options and TAPOs (traded average price options, a form of Asian option).
There are twelve companies who have exclusive rights to trade in the Ring and around 100 companies involved in the LME in total.
Contrary to popular belief, the precious metals, gold and silver are not traded on the London Metal Exchange, but on the over-the-counter market usually referred to as the London Bullion Market, by the members of the London Bullion Market Association. Platinum and palladium are traded on the London Platinum and Palladium Market. Minor metals are not traded on the LME. Many companies involved in minor metals are members of the Minor Metal Trade Association.
[edit] Electronic Trading
The LME finally launched an electronic platform called LME Select. This was developed by a Swedish software house called Cinnober. The platform is a FIX based trading platform, and has a significant and increasing share of the total LME business. Its major strengths are its scalability and reliability.
