The CME Eurozone HICP futures contract is a cash-settled product that tracks annual changes in the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices, excluding tobacco (HICP), for the Eurozone, as calculated by the European Statistical Institute (Eurostat). The price index measures the level of prices for market goods and services consumed by households in the Eurozone, 12 European Union member states that use the euro as their currency. The Eurozone HICP is an aggregate of the member states' HICPs. It is targeted to cover almost 99.1% per of all Eurozone household consumption.

The use of both over-the-counter and exchange-traded interest rate derivatives has grown dramatically over the past twenty years as risk managers have embraced these tools to hedge their fixed-income portfolios or to take a view on the markets. While there are a myriad of choices for hedging interest rate risk, one of the major components of that risk-inflationary expectations-has, until recently, been handled exclusively with interest rate futures or swaps. CME Eurozone HICP futures offer a targeted way to hedge interest rate rate in Europe.

Recently, CME introduced several enhancements to CME Eurozone HICP futures on CME Globex including Implied Spreads and Request For Quotes (RFQ) functionality. To learn more, click here.

With CME Eurozone HICP futures contracts, you can:

• Tap into the deep liquidity of the European inflation derivatives market
• Trade with large numbers of natural payers and receivers of inflation
• Hedge short term inflation risks
• Express views on monthly inflation numbers

For the latest Market Expectations of Eurozone HICP, click here.

Advantages of CME Interest Rate Markets

• Concentrated liquidity - More than 1.5 million CME interest rate futures trade every day resulting in consistently tight spreads
• Price transparency - At CME, trading transactions take place in an open, fair and anonymous trading environment with market prices universally available in real time
• Market integrity - The CME Clearing House serves as counterparty to every trade protecting the financial integrity of CME markets
• Regulatory assurance - The highest trading standards and supervision are assured through the integrated compliance and market surveillance functions of CME