KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, U.S. — The Kansas City Board of Trade (KCBT) said on Dec. 1 that during the month of November it continued to add to the annual trading volume records in the hard red winter (HRW) wheat futures contract and the exchange as a whole.

The records were first set in October and exceeded the previous records set in 2010.

Through Nov. 30, a total of 6,089,068 HRW wheat futures contracts or 30.45 billion bushels had traded, exceeding last year's annual volume record of 5,549,842 contracts or 27.75 billion bushels by 9.7% with one month remaining to build on the record. The KCBT hard red winter wheat futures contract is the world benchmark pricing mechanism for bread wheat.

HRW wheat futures trading volume in November was the second largest for that calendar month at 442,103 contracts. The November record stands at 602,081 contracts traded last year. HRW wheat futures volume posted a 14.5% gain over October's trading volume of 386,217 contracts.

Total exchange annual volume amounted to 6,324,938 contracts at the end of November, exceeding last year's annual volume record of 5,697,874 contracts by 11% with one month remaining in the year. Exchange volume of 451,473 posted a 13.3% gain over October's volume of 398,651 contracts and was the third largest for any given November with November 2010 volume of 624,481 contracts remaining as the record.

Each KCBT wheat futures contract represents 5,000 bushels of wheat.