FIS at the forefront of SGX Container Futures launch

Freight Investor Services (FIS), a world-leading broker in freight and commodity futures markets, is at the forefront of Container freight futures as Singapore Exchange (SGX) are due to launch a Container futures contract. Singapore Exchange (SGX) will launch four Container futures contracts on the 20th of February for trading and clearing and corresponding over-the-counter forward freight agreement contracts (FFA) for clearing.

The container market is a large, complex, and systemically volatile market at the core of the global economy. Driven by high market indexation since 2008, this has driven the growth in contracts designed to manage risk and develop additional opportunities. Greater volatility, geopolitical uncertainty, and post-pandemic effects disrupting supply chains have driven more interest in the last few years.

Annualised 30-day volatility was 34.2% in 2022 and 36.4% Year to Date (YTD). Freight Investor Services (FIS) is the leading broker of freight derivatives, having been one of the pioneering brokers of the market and posting a dominant share of cleared FFA volumes. SGX named FIS the top broker on freight and bulk commodities for the last ten years, and FIS have worked hard to help the market access flows from Asia. As a first-mover, FIS traded the first new round of container freight futures in 2022, settled against independent container benchmarks produced by leading price benchmark provider Freightos, published and audited via the Baltic Exchange in London and now trading cleared on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group in the USA.

Peter Stallion, Container FFA Broker at FIS, said, “The launch of Freightos Baltic Index (FBX) Settled container freight futures on SGX comes at an opportune time, with recent volatility in freight rates impacting all businesses in the container freight ecosystem. SGX provides greater access for clients in Asia, and those already trading in the liquid dry FFAs market, providing an excellent opportunity to develop container futures volume. We look forward to taking a leading role as this market develops.”
Source: Freight Investor Services (FIS)