KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, U.S. — The Kansas City Board of Trade (KCBT) set a multitude of new records as of July 31, the company announced on Aug. 2. On July 30, new records were set for hard red winter (HRW) wheat single-day volume and open interest. Trading volume for the month of July broke all previous monthly records for the exchange and for the HRW wheat futures contract.

On July 30, 60,534 HRW wheat futures contracts were traded, which broke the previous single-day volume record of 47,937 contracts, which was just set on July 15, by 26.2%. A new record was also set for electronic trading as 50,336 contracts were traded, breaking the previous record of 42,913 contracts that was set on July 15.

Open interest at the end business July 30 stood at 202,876 contracts in the HRW wheat futures contract, which was also an all-time high. On June 4, a new record was set in HRW wheat futures open interest with 172,953 contracts outstanding. This broke the previous record of 172,936 contracts that was set on July 12, 2006. Open interest has been steadily increasing, setting numerous records in July. July 30 was the first day ever that open interest exceeded 200,000 contracts. Open interest measures the number of open trading positions in a market. Each KCBT wheat futures contract represents 5,000 bushels of wheat.

A total of 635,546 HRW wheat futures contracts were traded in July, an increase of 3.7% over the previous all-time monthly volume record of 612,733 contracts set just last month.

Total exchange volume in July tallied 650,626 contracts, breaking the previous monthly volume record of 620,982 contracts set last month by 4.8%. Volume traded in July was more than double the amount traded in July 2009, with HRW wheat volume up 112.4% and total exchange volume up 111.8%.

Increased volume and open interest in KCBT wheat futures was attributed to market rallies and extension of long positions in the marketplace. Drought in E.U. and former Soviet Union wheat-growing areas raised concerns regarding declines in world wheat production.

The KCBT September 2010 contract gained $1.78 1/2 or 36% in the past month, closing at $6.74 1/2 on July 30 Dec 2010 gained $1.78 1/4 or 34.7% in the past month, closing at $6.91 1/2.