The Key Market Developments of IME in Q4, 2021

The overall market performance of the IME in Q4 of 2021 was very promising with most of commodity groups on high demand. The market rebounded after the vaccination against covid-19 took momentum with record inoculations of 1 million jabs a day which boosted immunity against the relentless virus leading to the return of the laid-off labor at the beginning of Q4 to work plants and the opening up of the crippled businesses. The IME like many other markets had dwindled the size of working staff and put the rest on makeshift furloughs and remote working before the situation gets back to almost normal.

In light of resumption of trade activities, the exchange posted record volumes of trade in the spot market though futures and options did not perform as strong as the year earlier due to the time lag between the harvest of some agriculture products like saffron which usually carry major weight of contract volumes in the futures market. In the financial segment of the exchange the market witnessed increase in instruments and trade activities.

Spot Market

During the Q4, new commodities were listed on the exchange. Due to the brilliant performance of the IME in fostering transparency and sound price discovery based on supply and demand the government decided to lift control price policy on steel production chain and mandated that all steel industry products and raw materials from iron ore to coking coal through to steel billets, slabs, rebar, and steel coil and sheet products be offered by producers on the IME. Before the government decision, almost 60% of the annual production of 45-million-ton of the steel industry had been operating on the exchange. Another addition to the IME's spot market was the cement in various types which is traded in large quantities almost 1 million tonnes a week as of October 2021.

Futures:

Re-listing of Emami Gold Coin futures was put on the agenda of the joint meeting of the capital market regulator and the Central Bank in November. The contract was highly popular among the derivatives market investors and constituted over half of the total trade value of the exchange before being delisted due to price turmoil of gold in 2016.

Actually, preliminary works, started in July for adding copper cathode to the IME futures inventory, paid off bringing the red metal to the IME platform before season change. The contract was officially launched on December 17^th in a ceremony attended by officials from the industry, exchange, capital market regulator, traders and end-users. Copper market volatilities and the need to hedge against price movements by the industry players, traders and downstream manufacturers laid the groundwork for designing the copper cathode futures contract. Iran is among top ten producers of copper in the world.

Sukuk and Commodity ETFs

During the period new sukuks were issued to finance industries hungry for cash flows. The funding sukuks were offered in the form of Standard Parallel Salam contracts which provides capital for industries to produce commodity and offer it on the exchange. At the same time, over six commodity ETFs on gold and saffron were launched. The funds units were sold out at the early hours of opening of the market.

CDR Transactions

One of the major developments particularly in the last quarter of the year 2021 was the listings of new commodities to the CDR trades including rice, barley and raisin. Commodity Depository Receipts (warehouse receipts) are securities issued against storing of commodities by the farmers in the licensed warehouses and registered vaults of the IME, tradeable on the financial platform of the exchange. Wheat, rice, barley, saffron, cumin seeds, pistachio and gold are the most popular traded securities on this platform. The security is acceptable by the clearing house of the exchange as collateral in futures trades and last resort delivery option on derivatives.

The IME operates physical delivery (spot), derivatives and financial markets for over 120000 clients including commodity producers and suppliers, traders, industries, end-users, and investors.

IME Overall Performance in 2021

From January 3^rd 2021 up to December 25^th 2021, the IME has posted its best performance since establishment with trades of over 59 million tonnes of physical commodities as well as trade of over 7 million derivatives. In addition, more than 2.3 billion financial contracts changed hands in this period. The exchange smashed all-time annual trade value logging over 22 billion USD.

Spot Market

Derivatives Market

Financial Market