Fewer than 700, 000 short-term interest-rate futures contracts traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange just six years ago.

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These involve selling short-term December 1999 interest-rate futures contracts and buying September 1999 and March 2000 ones, on the assumption that short-term rates will spike over the millennium because of extra demand for cash.

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But last month, when the French futures exchange, Matif, opened electronic markets alongside its pits, trading in short-term interest-rate contracts quickly migrated to the computers.

ECONOMIST: Futures markets