On September 17, 2025, FOW Trading Asia 2025 hosted by Futures and Options World (FOW) was held in Hong Kong, China. It was the first time that Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) participated in this event in Hong Kong as an exhibitor and shared the latest developments of China’s futures market, attracting wide attention from various participants of the event.

This event brought together more than 300 attendees from over 20 countries and regions around the world, with a wide range of topics covering opportunities and challenges facing the Asian derivatives markets, macroeconomic outlook, the development of Asian options market, updates on derivatives markets in China and India, and Asian power energy futures trading, etc.

At the award ceremony of FOW Asia Pacific Awards 2025, SHFE was awarded “New Contract of the Year” for its listing of lead, nickel, tin and aluminum oxide options. The launch of these four options has enriched the options product system of SHFE, basically achieving the full coverage of non-ferrous metal options. This provides the market, particularly the non-ferrous metals industry, with more comprehensive risk management tools. One year after their listing, these four options have recorded a cumulative trading volume of 63.51 million lots, a cumulative turnover of 49.49 billion yuan, and an average daily open interest of 220 thousand lots.

China’s futures market is gradually opening in recent years. Currently, more than 100 futures and options products have been opened to Qualified Foreign Investors (QFI). Overseas participation keeps increasing. This year, SHFE further opened three additional batches of 16 futures and options products to QFI, totaling the number of QFI-accessible products to 32, accounting for over 70% of all products listed on SHFE, the highest among China’s onshore futures exchanges. Among that, 6 international products are directly opened to global investors. These products cover a wide range of industry sectors such as metals, energy, chemical, and shipping, meeting diverse risk management and asset allocation needs of various market participants. The exchange now has overseas clients from over 30 countries and regions in six continents globally. In the first half of 2025, the average daily trading volume and open interest of QFI clients on SHFE (including Shanghai International Energy Exchange, INE) increased by over 40% and over 80% respectively YOY, and the number of QFI clients by the end of June, 2025 increased by over 50% YOY.

During the event, SHFE attended a side panel named “Cracking the China Code: Strategies for Engaging with the World's Largest Derivatives Market”. Together with experts from DH International Fund Management, Guotai Junan Futures and Yuanta Futures (Hong Kong), the panelist from SHFE discussed the latest progress in the opening of China’s futures market, and how China’s futures market can help various market participants manage risks and adapt to changes. The panelists agreed that China’s futures market, with its diverse range of products and strong liquidity, has repeatedly weathered intense fluctuations in the global commodities market and is increasingly attracting participation from global investors. Amid ongoing uncertainties in the global economy, the rapid expansion of China’s futures market opening this year will better meet the needs of industrial clients in managing spot market volatility and institutional clients in diversifying their investment portfolio allocations.

Moving forward, SHFE will continue to open its market in an orderly manner, diversify its product mix, improve the functioning of its market, keep expanding the scope of products accessible to global investors, steadily promote the internationalization of SHFE, and consistently serving global investors.