CME Group has launched a free tool to help market users gauge futures market liquidity across time zones.
For free of charge, the CME Liquidity Tool allows traders to measure the current and historical liquidity of CME Group futures products across asset classes.
According to CME Group, clients can capitalise on new trading opportunities in increasingly deep and liquid CME Group futures markets across time zones around the globe.
The tool offers a way to view and export charts measuring market liquidity on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis, CME Group revealed.
It will be able to do this during periods of varying market volatility across North American, European and Asia trading hours.
Additionally, the tool measures market liquidity based on three key measures of market liquidity and cost, including bid-ask spread, or the difference between the prices quoted to buy and sell futures, and book depth, which is the number of contracts in both buy and sell orders at a given price.
The third key measure is the cost to trade, which is the amount it will cost in ticks equal to the minimum bid-ask spread to buy or sell specific order size, CME Group cited.
Julie Winkler, CME Group CCO, said: "Liquidity in our CME Group futures markets has grown dramatically over the last five years, particularly during European and Asian trading hours.”
Winkler added: "Our new CME Liquidity Tool offers market users a cost-effective and efficient way to analyse complex liquidity data of core futures products to inform their trading and hedging strategies."
Stephen Christian, managing director, Citi Futures, clearing and collateral, said: "Citi plans to use the CME Liquidity Tool as an additional resource to help global clients better understand various products' liquidity profiles throughout the 24-hour trading day.”
