IME Data Shows 233,000 Futures Hosted in 1 Month

More than 233,000 futures contracts worth 5.173 trillion rials ($20 million) changed hands at the Iran Mercantile Exchange in the calendar month ending August 21.
Underlying assets traded were mostly precious metals and agro products including saffron, pistachio and cumin.
Gold and silver futures accounted for 56% of the total traded derivatives, according to data released by the IME news agency imereport.ir.   
Agriculture futures included 141,314 ‘Negin Saffron’ contracts worth 2.13 trillion rials. Negin is considered the best quality Iranian saffron.
Other derivative deals were 2,848 “Poushal Saffron” worth 33.3 billion rials, 606 pistachio futures at 110 billion rials, 152 cumin futures 12 billion rials.
Traders exchanged 12.6 million commodity-linked certificates of deposit (CD) at the IME in the month valued at 9.88 trillion rials ($38m). The CDs were backed by gold coins, saffron, rice, pistachio, raisin, cumin and dates.
Gold-based CDs topped the list both in terms of volume and value. A total of 8.92 million gold CDs worth 9.33 trillion rials ($260m) changed hands.  Other CD’s were backed by saffron, cumin, raisin and pistachio.
Commodity CD is a security indicating ownership of the holder on a particular amount of a commodity supported by standard warehouse receipt issued by warehouses certified by the Securities and Exchange Organization, the Iranian capital market regulator.
Selling a CD in the primary market means selling the stored or deposited commodity by the owner, and buying means buying of such commodity. CDs securitize a company’s product inventory and offer buyers easy ownership of goods without the usual hassles of storage and insurance.