Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX), the country's largest commodity derivatives exchange, today launched India’s first options contract on copper futures. On May 21, 2018, the contract has clocked a traded volume of 461 lots with value of Rs 218.9 million.

Currently, June, August and November 2018 option contracts are available for trading, with one MCX copper futures contract (1 MT) as the underlying. The exercised positions of the options contract post expiry shall devolve into the respective underlying future positions. This new options contract provides the optimal tool to hedge and mitigate price risk in copper for the stakeholders. MCX copper options are available to trade from 10:00am-11:30pm/11:55pm on weekdays.

In order to encourage active participation in the market the exchange is not levying any transaction fees on all the commodity options contracts till September 30, 2018.

Mrugank Paranjape, MD & CEO, MCX said, "This promising start of our copper options trading by virtue of its design value adds to the underlying futures and gives copper industry a greater flexibility with alternative opportunities to take on price risk. We expect that this new tool will gain overtime from industry confidence and support as a highly attractive hedging instrument to keep risks of price uncertainty under their control.'' 

Shares of the company declined Rs 1.7, or 0.23%, to trade at Rs 736.55. The total volume of shares traded was 21,584 at the BSE (1.07 p.m., Tuesday).