Volumes for Eurex’s German government bond contracts all surged, while CME Group’s five and 10 year US Treasury futures dipped.

But the big action was in Brazil and China. BM&F Bovespa had a remarkable month – its One Day Interbank Deposit Futures and Options not only smashed daily trading records but respectively surpassed, by number of contracts traded, NYSE Liffe’s Three Month Euro (Euribor) Futures and Options.

Still more impressively, BM&F Bovespa Equity Options became the world’s busiest equity options exchange by number of contracts, with a huge rise in volume from about 55m trades in February to 88m. That even eclipsed the 34% rise at Nasdaq OMX PHLX.

Taken together, these Brazilian booms make BM&F Bovespa the fifth biggest derivatives exchange in the world after Korea Exchange, CME Group, Eurex-ISE and NYSE Euronext.

In China, Shanghai Futures Exchange’s Steel Rebar Future, whose volume had fallen from a peak of 37m contracts in November 2009 to less than 10m in February, rebounded strongly to 22m.

The London Metal Exchange now has only one contract in the top five most actively traded metals derivatives – its Primary High Grade Aluminium Future is fifth. Shanghai has the top three slots with Steel, Zinc and Copper Cathode, while Comex Gold is fourth.

In a similar way, CBOT is just clinging on to the top five in agricultural derivatives, with fifth place for its Corn Futures – the main story in this China-dominated league table was the huge rise in White Sugar Futures at Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange, which leapt from 22m trades in February to 42m, eclipsing the previous record of 31m, set in January.

White Sugar thus stayed ahead of BM&F’s One Day Interbank Deposit Future to keep the number four spot by volume in all world listed derivatives.

Subscribers can check out FOi’s full report on trading activity in March, with graphs and tables at:

http://www.fointelligence.com/ChannelPage/15245/Research/Research.html