Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group recently announced that it will start futures trading of Japanese electricity and liquefied natural gas (LNG) on February 8. The two commodities will be listed on CME Group's New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). Both commodities are said to be traded in yen.

Similar electric power futures trading began last May by the European Energy Exchange (EEX) Group, and the Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM) also test-listed power futures. TOCOM is also planning a new listing of LNG futures.

In the future, competition between exchanges is expected to intensify, and while there is a view that opportunities for arbitrage trading will increase using buying and selling in different markets, some Japanese futures commodity merchant(FCM) say that "real demand sources cannot expect market participation and there is little taste as a place for hedging".

(IRuniverse)