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Operator
Good day, and welcome to the CME Group second quarter 2020 earnings call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to John Pescher. Please go ahead, sir.
John Pescher
Good morning, and thank you all for joining us. I'm going to start with the safe harbor language, and I'm going to turn it over to Terry, Julie, and John for brief remarks, followed by questions. Other members of our management team will also participate in the Q&A. Statements made on this call and in the other Reference documents on our website that are not historical facts are forelooking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance. They involve risk, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or implied in any statements. More detailed information about factors that may affect our performance can be found on our website. Also, on the last page of the earnings release, you will find a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures. With that, I'll turn it over to Terry.
Terry
Thanks, John, and thank you all for joining us today. My comments today will be brief so we can spend the majority of our time directly addressing your questions. We released our executive commentary this morning, which provided extensive details on the second quarter. As John mentioned, John, Sean, Derek, and Julie Winkler have joined me today. In Q2, we averaged 17.6 million contracts per day, which is down from 21 million contracts per day a year ago and down from our strong start to the year in Q1. The global exchange traded market has been challenged in many different product areas since the beginning of the pandemic, impacting us and many others in the trading industry. Clearly, the front end of the U.S. rate curve has become impacted, from a trading perspective. Also, with the recovery of the price of oil back to the $40 range, the global crude oil market has stabilized with a fairly flat forward curve, leading to a reduction in the volatility back to more normalized levels as the market balances supply and demand. While in the near term that reduces the need for some participants to manage risk with us and others, the competitive dynamic of trading volumes across different markets has not changed. However, with the global crude oil demand still depressed due to the COVID-19, which we believe is a temporary situation, we expect to see market conditions improve as global oil demand returns. We are very fortunate to have a highly diversified business. We are looking forward to the integration of broker tech coming onto Globex by year-end. We remain committed to achieving capital and operational efficiencies for our clients. Through all of this, I assure you we remain very disciplined as it relates to expenses. What I'd like to do is turn the call over to Julie Winkler to provide some context on our sales outreach, what we are hearing from our customers, and she will touch briefly upon our data business. Then I look forward to answering your questions. Julie? Julie?
Julie Winkler
Thank you, Terry. Despite challenging circumstances, we are continuing to see positive momentum in our global client engagement. Similar to last quarter, many of our clients continue to work from home, and our sales organization has excelled at their virtual outreach. During Q2, client engagement by our sales organization was up 66% versus the same period last year, and year-to-date sales activity is up 81%. We are actively engaging with clients via virtual meetings, webinars, online events, email communication and chat to support the execution of our sales and go-to-market strategy. Clients continue to express their appreciation for how highly responsive we have been through the peak of the crisis and our continued focus on delivering value-added solutions across product lines. Clients in some areas are beginning to return to the office which means we will take appropriate steps to adjust our coverage model where safe and appropriate. In Q2, we also saw an acceleration of our cross-introduction and cross-sell efforts to capitalize on the next acquisition. May represented a record high month with more than 300 cross-introductions across our sales organization, which is more than the entire first quarter combined. A total of 500 cross-introductions were made throughout Q2. Additionally, we reinvigorated campaign selling to help bring key products and services to market. We are seeing great success with those campaigns, including the relaunch of our three-year treasury product, which had more than 40 clients participating on day one of trading. Our active trader retail segment performance was strong in Q2, and year-to-date ADV is up over 70%, driven by an overall increase in retail trading resulting from the lockdowns. CME was well positioned prior to these events, and its product mix, particularly the e-micros, allowed it to take advantage of strong macro factors. Lastly, our market data business had a strong quarter. Through the first half of 2020, consolidated revenue was up 3%. The CME market data professional subscribers count was solid due to increased subscriptions as traders were migrating to work-from-home environments. We continue to see success with our data services strategy, which confirms the value of our data to our global customer base. I will now turn things over to John.
John
Thanks, Julie. In the first half of the year, in addition to navigating the challenging environment, we've been very active with the ongoing Next integration. We remain on track to migrate from the legacy Next trading systems to our Globex technology. We recently announced to our clients the cutover dates for broker tech. Brokertech EU clients will begin trading on November 16th, and Brokertech Americas trading will commence on December 7th. With our progress on the integration, the remote working environment, and our overall strong expense discipline, we finished the second quarter with adjusted operating expenses, excluding license fees, of $380 million. We are extremely focused on actively managing our costs. Based on our outlook for expenses for the rest of the year, our guidance for adjusted operating expenses excluding license fees for 2020 is being reduced from a range of $1.64 to $1.65 billion to approximately $1,595,000,000. This level of spending reflects the reality of the current operating environment, and we would expect a higher level of spending next year assuming the conditions improve from here. With that short summary, we'd like to open up the call for your questions. Based on the number of analysts covering us, Please limit yourself to one question and then feel free to jump back into the queue. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off. Again, press star 1 to ask a question. We will pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal. Our first question comes from Rich Rapetto with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Rich Rapetto
Good morning, Terry, John, and Julie. I guess my question is on expenses, and you made a solid reduction, John, in the expense guidance. But I guess the question is, the first half run rate, you're averaging somewhere around 383% you know, million in expenses, extra license and fees. If you back into, you know, that full year guidance, you know, it'd be an 8.5% increase in the back half. And you get, you know, hopefully you get the 15 million of P&L expenses coming from the next synergies. So I guess the question is, can we go down, if the current environment didn't rebound, say, in 2020, is there more room to cut expenses? Because I know Yeah, some events have already been canceled and so forth.
John
Yeah, thank you, Rich. Thanks for the question. In terms of the first half versus the back half of the year, you know, we do expect to have some increase in costs in the back half of the year as, you know, for example, in depreciation as we migrate on to glowbacks, and also we're in the process of a data center consolidation effort, and we have a build-out of a data center in the in New York, New Jersey area as part of the integration efforts that we're doing with NEXT. Also, we do have planned for the back half of the year some opening of some economies around the world where we would expect to see some more travel and marketing efforts as those economies open up. that is planned for sort of in the back half of the year. If that doesn't happen, obviously we wouldn't expect those costs to come through. But in terms of our guidance, we did make some assumption that there would be a modest opening in Asia in particular, for example. In terms of our overall expense discipline, we are as a management team, very focused on our expenses, you know, for this year and in planning for next year. So, you know, we have a laser-like focus on, you know, on our expenses, and we're, you know, the entire organization is making sure that we expend every dollar, you know, as efficiently as we possibly could spend it.
Rich Rapetto
Got it. Thank you, and everybody, please stay safe and healthy. You too, Rich. Thanks, Rich.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Dan Fannin with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Dan Fannin
Thanks. Good morning. My question is on market data. Julie, you mentioned some of the strengths. If you could kind of elaborate on the outlook for that business and how we should think about growth in the broader market data business for the remainder of this year and in the next.
Julie Winkler
Sure. Thank you, Dan. Yeah, as mentioned, you know, we had a great Q2 with consolidated revenue in the market data business of 135 million, which is, you know, up about 5% over the second quarter of 2019. And the majority of that was driven by those increased professional subscriber counts. So what has happened, right, is that in this work-from-home configuration, we're seeing modest demand in display devices. And, you know, it's also just coupled with, you know, other licensing that we're doing across the business. And so, you know, we're continuing to closely consult with our data vendors and our clients to gather input. We, you know, have a really great channel partner base for our data distribution, which gives us really a wide range of very flexible ways to deliver our data and new products. As we kind of look at the outlook and what else we see, you know, we still see increased need for our data in terms of automated trading solutions. And we also are seeing that in terms of using our data into product creation. So that comes through as both non-display license revenue as well as derived data revenue. We are certainly focused on the next data integration along with what we're doing on the Globex side. There also is a lot of next data that needs to be integrated as well as continuing to create more flexible distribution channels in terms of what you saw us announce with our CME SmartStream and other new products. So this last quarter we did the successful addition of the new 10-year Treasury bond as well in our next data product. And that just coupled with continued strength in our policy, our pricing, and our audit functions, And really making sure that our clients have that level playing field and access to our data, I think, is contributing as well as the outlook for our market data business. Thank you.
Operator
We will next go to Alex Cram with UBS. Please go ahead.
Alex Cram
Yeah, hey, good morning. Yeah, I know this is a difficult conversation. question to answer on the rate side but everybody can obviously see the volume and open interest trends but curious if there are any other data points you guys are looking at anything in conversations with clients that gives you some confidence that we may have troughed here and that things can improve when certain events happen or if maybe people start putting more risk on etc what are you looking forward to to get comfort
Terry
Why don't we, Alex, thank you for that question. I'm going to ask Sean Tully to give you his take on that, which he's been obviously briefing all of us his thoughts with his team. So, Sean?
Sean Tully
Yeah, hi. Thanks very much for the question, a really good question. You know, during the March timeframe, we saw a very high volatility in interest rates. And if we look more recently in the month of July, we've seen unprecedented low volatility across the entire yield curve from our euro dollar futures all the way out to our ultra bond futures. In fact, if you look at our eighth euro dollar future, this is the lowest volatility we have seen since the inception of the contract in 1987. Nonetheless, the level of uncertainty in economic numbers has never been higher when seen from the perspective of the range of possible outcomes for numbers such as unemployment and GDP. while the Fed is currently doing everything possible to support the economy in the short run. And, you know, during the month of March and April, bought as much as $300 billion a week worth of securities. You know, and in fact, increased the size of its balance sheet from $4.2 trillion to $7.2 trillion, or plus $2.9 trillion, sorry, or up $2.9 trillion. in a period of just over three months, including the purchase of $1.7 trillion worth of securities, those actions obviously have dampened volatility tremendously. Nonetheless, if you look at what happened post the financial crisis, when the Federal Reserve between 2008 and 2014 purchased $3.6 trillion, they then later on proactively reduced the size of their balance sheet. In particular, they reduced the size of their balance sheet from $4.5 trillion to $3.7 trillion. from January of 2018 to September of 2019, from which we did get additional volumes and volatility. If you look at the unprecedented deficit this year, estimated at 3.7 trillion, now estimated potentially 2 trillion of deficit next year, you're going to see the highest debt-to-GDP ratios the U.S. government has seen certainly since World War II and possibly ever. We're going to see the highest levels of debt in the U.S. ever. If you look at the refunding announcements, so if you look at the refunding announcements we had in the quarterly refunding announcement by the U.S. Treasury in February versus the quarterly refunding announcement that we had in May, the growth in coupon issuance was 24% by the U.S. government in order to address debt. that huge debt and deficit need. Next week, we're going to get the next August, the August quarterly refunding announcement. The growth in coupon securities, the growth in debt and deficits, once the Federal Reserve reduces its intervention in the market and once the pandemic recedes, the needs for hedging, the needs for our products are or I mean much, much larger, I think, than ever before in history. So, yes, July is very low volatility. However, the unprecedented debts and deficits and issuance of coupon securities means that the risk that is going to need to be managed on a go-forward basis is going to be much larger than ever. I said earlier that the Federal Reserve was buying as much as $300 billion-plus a week in securities. It's now reduced that to $20 billion a week. So we're already seeing significantly reduced activity by the Fed. I hope that helps.
Terry
Thanks, Sean. Thank you. Thank you, Alex.
Operator
Thank you. Next, we will go to Brian Bedell of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Brian Bedell
Thanks very much. Just wanted to, Sean, maybe follow on those comments. I guess it is an interesting dynamic of the potential, like you said, in terms of the hedgeability or the hedgeable assets that can, hedgeable treasury outstanding stock that will need to be hedged and speculated on. I guess, what's your view on, if the Fed stays in an intervention mode for a prolonged period of time, is there, Is there anything you can do on your end at CME to stimulate those rate volumes, or really we're kind of dependent on that environment? And then maybe just a second question tied to that, maybe you can also talk about the equity index franchise. You've got a lot of new products coming on in terms of the options and the taco offering as well, if you can talk about your efforts there and outlook for volume growth in those areas.
Sean Tully
Yeah, of course. Thanks very much. I greatly appreciate the question. We're very excited. As you know, innovation has been one of our mantras over the last several years. It has always been part of CME Group's DNA. But our innovation continues unabated, and the results so far this year are extremely strong. If you look at the first half of 2020, products launched since 2010. This is data that we frequently update for you. Anyway, the first half of this year, we achieved 3.2 million contracts ADV in new products launched since 2010. You'll recall that last year, those same products were just 2.1 million ADV. So we've seen 52% growth year-over-year in the ADV of those products launched since 2010. In addition to that, in the first half of this year, we earned $193 million in revenues. Likewise, up annualized about 25% year-over-year. So the innovation continues on an extremely strong basis across all of our asset classes and is definitely a driver of growth. The single greatest product launch in CME Group history, as you will be aware by now, is our micro e-minis. The micro e-minis have achieved 1.6 million contract ADV so far this year. And if you look at the second quarter, they achieved $1.9 million. If you look at other, actually, in addition to that, we have recently announced on August 31st, we will be launching micro options. So these are the smaller options that are the option equivalent of the micro e-mini futures, which we're very excited about relative to the very significant uptake that we've had in micros. If you look at the micros, another thing regarding the micros that we've talked about through time is their RPC. When we launch a new product, we typically have higher incentives, so that net RPC is going to be lower. As you know, in the second quarter of 2019, the RPC on the micro e-minis was 6.8 times We told you at the time that we would be reducing those incentives over time and that that RPC would increase. We're very happy to say that in the second quarter of 2020, they're about 12.5 cents per micro E-mini, so nearly double the RPC of a year ago. In addition to that, we recently launched the new three-year treasury future, relaunched the new three-year treasury futures. We did it as we always do in terms of having a product that delivers a lower total cost with, in fact, half of the minimum price increment of the previous contract that existed. We're very excited about our traction in the new three-year future. On the first day of that contract, we had 40 participants. We've had more than 50 participants since launch as of today. We're achieving success. over 3,000 ADV a day. On the first day, we achieved more volume on Globex in that contract than we did in our ultra 10-year future. So we are very excited about participants there from banks, asset managers, hedge funds, and about 5,500 contracts open interest, which shows that it's real end users that are trading the product. That gets me back to the previous slide. You know, the previous, I guess, all-time great launch of CME Group History was the Ultra 10-Year Future. You know, I'm very happy to say that the Ultra 10-Year Future, even in this environment, the ADV is 262,000 a day. We're up about 21% year-over-year, and its open interest is 977,000 contracts, likewise up well over 20% year-over-year. So we continue to see, you know, innovation. So during COVID, we launched a very successful three-year treasury. We've seen extremely strong growth in our micro e-minis. And, you know, products like our recently launched Ultra 10-year continue to thrive. I might mention our SOFR futures. SOFR futures volumes are up 58% year-over-year, 45,000 contracts a day. ADV, we had a record open interest in March of 612,000 contracts. And again, you know, huge growth with 3.2 million contracts a day in ADV from the financials unit coming this year from innovative new products. Thanks for the question.
Operator
Thank you.
Sean Tully
Thanks, Brian.
Operator
Next, we'll move to Ari Ghosh with CME Group. Please go ahead.
Ari Ghosh
Hey, good morning, everyone. Maybe just a quick one for Sean on the metals complex. You know, it's a smaller revenue piece here, but could be facing some nice tailwinds given Fed intervention and the rounds of stimulus. And you've also launched a new Plex delivery gold contract. So just curious, you know, the level of interest you're seeing here, you know, are you seeing interest build? And then any color on broader customer trends out of Asia where you've typically seen strong demand for both your metals and equity index products?
Terry
Ari, we're going to have Derek Salmon answer that, who heads up our metals complex. So, Derek.
Derek
Hey, Ari. Yeah, thanks for the question. It's Derek here. Yeah, metals continues to be a big area of growth for us, not only just coming off the overall macro environment that's very positive for gold and the points that you've made. We just recently have revisited the highs and come back to the highs of over $1,900 that we just last retested back in March. The business this year has been spectacular, and to be honest, it's actually seen significant market share gains relative to the broader OTC market and the physical bullion market in London over the last five years as well. From a client perspective, we put up record numbers in Q1, actually record first-half numbers as well, and what's really interesting, what we like about the metals business and the precious particularly is the point you just made. Our international growth continues to set the pace for the overall participation in our markets. When you look at the first-half business this year, Overall, the business is up 18%. Our Asian business is up 30% from APAC. What we like about the non-U.S. businesses, I think you're aware, is that our rate per contract associated with our non-U.S. customer base comes at a substantially higher rate than our U.S. franchise, primarily because they tend to be a lower percent of members, and we also see folks in the retail bucket and kind of the buy-side participant coming to hire our P.C., So the overall macro trends for gold have been and continue to be very positive. The non-U.S. business continues to set the pace. And I think one of the really interesting things that we've seen, not only in the volume growth and participation from Europe and Asia, is, and not a lot of people pay attention to this, we are at all-time record stocks of gold in our depositories. If you go back to February, March of this year, we had about 8.5, 9 million ounces of gold in our COMEX warehouses. We're up to a little bit north of 30 million ounces right now. And that tells you not only the volume trends, the global participation, and the growth in the non-U.S. business, but it also means when the depositories grow like that, clearly the market is voting with its feet to determine that COMEX-branded warehouse depositories is the place where they want to have their metals, and that's been driving broader participation. So it becomes a virtuous cycle of volume growth, international participation, adding more materials into the warehouse, And that's been one of the major reasons why we've seen not just growth in the metals volumes overall, but continued high, strong growth in our rate per contract as well. I think our total rate per contract in our overall metals complex is the highest RPC contract we have at about $1.46. Despite the fact that business is up 17%, 18% volume-wise, we actually have an RPC that's drifting a little bit higher. I think it's about 1% up year on year. So strong growth in the non-U.S. participant, strong vote in terms of the metals flowing into depositories, and that's reflected both in the volumes of revenues and the higher rate per contract despite higher volumes. Thanks, Eric.
Ari Ghosh
Great follow-up. Thanks, guys. Thank you.
Operator
We will next go to Chris Allen of CompassPoint. Please go ahead.
Chris Allen
Good morning, everyone. Appreciate the incremental color on the cross-selling efforts. I wonder if you could give us any numbers in terms of how that's translating into whether it's volumes or open interest. And also if you could provide an update whether there's been any progress on the clearing front in terms of realizing any synergies for customers between the CME and DTCC. And maybe just a refresh on what the expectations are in terms of the benefits once the technology migrations over to Globex are completed. Thank you.
Terry
Thanks, Chris. I'm going to ask Julie Winkler to talk a little bit about the cross-selling and then on clearing with DTCC on the margin benefits. Sean can address that question. So, Julie, why don't you start?
Julie Winkler
Sure. Thanks for the question, Chris. Yeah, we're really making outstanding progress as we think about how we've been able to integrate the sales team to support cross-selling. As we kind of expected, right, there was a natural dip in those cross-introductions in late March and April as really the sales reps were focused on supporting those clients through this unprecedented volatility. But now what we're seeing is those efforts are really accelerating at a record pace. So we looked at Q2, and I mentioned it earlier, the 500 cross-introductions. May was a new monthly high for us where we did 300 across our respective businesses and A little more insight on that. So, nearly 70% of the cross-introductions that have been made have occurred for the transactional-based businesses in Q2. The FX franchise is really a cornerstone of that and is at the forefront of the cross-introduction effort. So, that would be optimization or EBS or broker tech clients that are being referred into our you know, futures and options are our core business. And, you know, kind of right after FX, you know, the other introductions have been happening with EBS as well as interest rates. So for futures and options as well as Triana and market data. I'd say, you know, the other probably standout client segment that we're seeing momentum with cross-selling is for our commercial clientele. And that's really happening across EBS as well as our optimization product suite. And so this is, you know, really kind of based on the investment that we're making in our global sales force and providing them with the training and the tools that they need to effectively cross-sell this holistic suite of products. So still a little early days for specifics in terms of the revenue that those items are generating today. Obviously, as we go into these clients going live with these products, we'll have more information on that. Thanks for the question. I'll turn it back to you, Terry.
Terry
Thanks, Julie. Sean, you want to address the clearing benefits with DTCC that we're working on?
Sean Tully
Yes, absolutely. So, as you mentioned, we are working very closely with DTCC on creating benefits or working on increasing our benefits. in the potential to cross margin between our treasury futures and cash treasuries. Those benefits today for the handful of clients that take advantage of them typically at 20% or 30% worth of offsets. We do expect to get those offset percentages closer to 70% plus once the agreements are finalized and approved by the regulators. We are working very closely with them on that. We don't have any announcements in that regard yet, though. I would like to mention, nonetheless, that in terms of delivering margin capital, total cost efficiencies to our customers, this is something we work on every day, and we have several initiatives. So, for example, with the increased volatility this year and with, therefore, the significant increases in margins that are required in order to cover the more volatile products, we have seen a significant uptake in portfolio margining, between our OTC swaps and our interest rate futures. We added seven new clients this year, so up to 55 clients, and two clients who had stopped using the service have started using it once again. So this year, on average, we've achieved $5.4 billion worth of margin savings for our clients, and that's an all-time record new high in terms of the average for the year to date. In addition to that, we are working – The clearinghouse is working hard on creating portfolio margining between our listed interest rate options and interest rate swaps as well. And that is another efficiency that we hope to launch in the next several months, which will also add unique efficiencies to the marketplace. So, yes, we're working on the efficiencies of the DTCC. We're getting greater traction in our portfolio margining against OTC swaps. and we're also looking to add portfolio margin against our listed interest rate options. Thanks, Sean.
Terry
Chris, thank you for your question.
Operator
Thank you. We will next go to Mike Carrier with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Mike Carrier
Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. It's a bigger picture question, but given the rate backdrop, I just wanted to get your take on this cycle versus the prior one. So the last time rates were here, you guys worked with clients and you were fairly innovative in creating new products, which eventually played out, but it did take some time. So in this backdrop, are you seeing similar trends in terms of demand for some of those contracts or even product innovation, or is it too early? And is the low-rate backdrop impacting other product areas similarly or not versus the last cycle?
Terry
Sean, you want to go ahead and address that, and then I'll jump in as well.
John Pescher
Sure.
Sean Tully
If you look at volatility, they're very different across the different markets, and you can see that in our volume numbers, right? So that's obviously volatility is something that is out of our control. The product's innovation, the interaction with clients, the delivering additional value, that's all in our control, and we do that every day. The volatility is outside of our control. As I said earlier, the month of July, all-time record low volatilities across the curve from you know, euro dollars all the way out to the ultra-volumes. If you look at the eighth euro dollar future, you know, the last time we've seen something like this, not surprisingly, the month of July looks to me a lot like October of 2012. And if you think about it, as I said earlier, the Federal Reserve has intervened by buying $2.9 trillion worth of securities, so increasing their balance sheet by $2.9 trillion. right, in a period of three or four months. That is almost as much intervention as they did during the entire financial crisis. During the entire financial crisis, their balance sheet grew by, you know, instead of 2.9 trillion, about 3.6 trillion. So they've already bought almost as many securities as they did back then. So unprecedented speed. And I think that's why the dollar volumes look, you know, similar again to October 2012. In terms of innovations, We're very excited about the three-year Treasury future that I mentioned earlier. You know, we're also very excited about growth that we've seen in our long end with the additional coupons, even with the intervention by the Federal Reserve. If you look at, as I said earlier, the ADV of the Ultra 10-year up more than 20% year-over-year, the bond future ADV, if you look at the full year, ADV is up 13%, and that's the bond future, and the Ultra bond up about 16%. So we continue to see more trading further out the curve. We had an email announcement out to our clients today reminding them, you know, about the great use of our bond and ultra bond futures in regards to the new 20-year issue. As you'll recall, during that May refunding, there was the announcement of the new 20-year bond by the U.S. Treasury. During the quarterly auction series, the three months, the Treasury did issue $50 billion worth of those bonds. And we have seen very good growth in our ultra bond and our bond futures, where those are being used as a hedge against that new 20-year issue. If you look at, for example, intercommodity spreads, the single most popular intercommodity spread in our rates complex today is now what we call the Bob spread, or bond versus ultra bond. And this is specifically around that new 20-year issue and the dynamics there, where during the WI period, when the new 20-year started trading, the new 20-year bond sits right at the center of the deliverable basket of our bond future. And the marketplace chose WI. that we trade in WI as a spread to the cheapest to deliver to our ultra-fond future. So we are seeing, you know, increasing use of our products further up the curve as the Treasury is issuing more securities. We're constantly looking as well at, you know, things like lower and minimum price increments. So you know that we had great success. and lowering the minimum price increment on cash two-year notes as well as two-year note futures. You'll recall we did that at the beginning of 2019, and we saw approximately an extra 160,000 contracts a day, additional volume in our two-year note futures. That was one of the things that caused us to launch the new three-year with a lower minimum price increment, matching the minimum price increment on the two-year and half of the minimum price increment that that contract had previously, and again, with a successful start You know, whether it is in the cash treasury bond market where we now have broker tech, we are definitely looking there at the innovation, the possibility for lowering minimum price increments, and what we can do there. You know, and I'll also answer your question with broker tech. We are moving on very well in terms of the migration of broker tech from the broker tech existing platform today over to CME Globex. And, you know, we, as John mentioned earlier, we do expect that cutover later this year. Next year, we will migrate EBS from its existing platform over to Globex.
Terry
Thanks, Sean. Mike, thank you for your question. I was going to add in, but I think Sean hit all the high points there. So thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Owen Lau with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Owen Lau
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Would you be able to provide any more color on the wells notice for your indices JV with S&P? But if not, can you talk more about ESG? Is there any ESG initiatives you would like to call out that CMD is working on? Thank you. John?
John
Sure. Thank you, Owen. This is John. In terms of the wells notice, You know, that is something that we, you know, have been aware of, and that is something that does not impact our trading business at all. And any questions regarding the Wells notice at the S&P Dow Jones JV should really be addressed to S&P Global. So I'd encourage you to contact them to get more updates. In terms of the ESG products, we certainly are involved in developing products around ESG initiatives. We currently have an equity product on the S&P ESG. I'll turn it over to Julie because she can talk a little bit about some of the work that her research team is doing regarding product development on the ESG space.
Julie Winkler
Yeah, thanks, John, and thanks for the question, Owen. We did introduce our first ESG report just a few weeks ago on our website, which talks a little bit more broadly about SAMI Group's ESG strategy, and a key part of that is definitely our product-related strategy and where the progress that we've been making in terms of cross-functional ESG product committee has really been looking at this across our product suite. And we believe there's some great opportunities to adjust some of our existing products as well as some new product introduction. And we are looking to get some of those rolled out before the balance of the year. There is a lot of interest from our client base, particularly in Europe, I would say a lot of investor interest. And that's been a key part of the success of our ESG 500 S&P index futures contracts, and we believe that that will also help drive some of the interest in these other benchmarks that we look to introduce later this year.
Terry
Thanks, Julie. Thank you, Owen.
Operator
We will move to our next question. That comes from Jeremy Campbell with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Jeremy Campbell
Hey, thanks. And, Sean, thanks for the macro color around the rates and the puts and takes of the outlook from here. I'm just wondering about the rates activity impact once we control for the number of users you guys have hooked into the CME futures ecosystem. Like I think over the past like six to eight years since the prior zero rate environment, your user base has grown in both the U.S. and abroad, but you have ADVs, you know, excluding the first quarter of this year that are kind of tracking more in line with the 2012 to 2014 levels. So, I know volatility is crazy low and maybe it's the Fed crowding everybody out a bit, but I would have thought even materially lower activity levels per user might have yielded a better overall activity level than the prior cycle. Sean?
Sean Tully
Yeah, I think that's a very good question. And I think your supposition is a good one. The challenge that we're facing is that the volatility we're seeing in July is is in fact lower than we saw in October of 2012, for example, which was the all-time low for the $8 euro future. So as I said earlier, the volatility in that $8 euro future, if you look at a continuous contract, is in fact the lowest it's ever been since the launch of the product. So I agree with your supposition. The volatility environment is more challenging now than it was in 2012, in fact. from that metric perspective. But again, with the unprecedented increase in the size of the debt and deficit, as well as the unprecedented uncertainty around the unemployment numbers and the GDP numbers, for example, I do believe that on a go-forward basis that there's going to be more hedging than ever before needed in the future once the pandemic recedes. Great.
Terry
Thanks.
Sean Tully
Thanks, Jeremy.
Operator
We will move next to Chris Harris with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Chris Harris
Yeah, I wanted to ask a little bit about 2021. I know it's early, but what do you guys need to see in order for expenses to grow in 2021? Would there also need to be revenue growth? And then related to that, I believe there's a decent amount of NEX synergies that should flow through next year. So maybe you can flesh out why spending would exceed the synergies next year.
John
John? Sure, Chris. This is John. Thank you for the question. In terms of our expense outlook, you're correct. It is early days to be able to provide you some guidance. We're all very hopeful that we can have the economies around the world open up safely. should the environment improve, you would see, for example, a higher level of travel and marketing spend as we look to intensify our client outreach. So that would mean that our expenses might be higher than the low single digits as we are growing off an artificially low base. And when I say low single digits, that's really our core expense growth rates. So You know, if you look over the last several years, you know, our expense growth rate, you know, on the core side has been about 2.5% to 3%. You know, as you can imagine, you know, with, you know, sales and, you know, our in-person marketing has been, you know, really curtailed. You know, the sales efforts in terms of travel and entertainment and marketing has really been curtailed during the pandemic. And hopefully as, you know, as the economies open up, we'll see, you know, a more intensified in-person, you know, where we can experience for our clients. In terms of synergies, you're right. The bulk of the synergies, you know, run rate synergy capture is in front of us. You know, we targeted 50 million last year. We exceeded that target and hit 64 million. We're targeting $110 million in run rate synergies. for this year, and we're well on our way to achieving that $110 million run rate. When you take a look at the amount of realized synergies that we have in our income statement in 2020, we anticipated that being approximately $15 million, and we've been able to accelerate that realized synergies to $25 million, and that was also something that was – that we were able to use to help reduce our overall expense, you know, guidance for 2020. So, really, when you think about, you know, our expense growth going into next year, you know, similar to the model that we used this year, you know, we've got a core expense growth rate of 2.5% to 3%. You know, we would make any adjustments for, you know, you know, for any additional spending, you know, relative to, you know, coming out of the COVID, you know, we would obviously reduce that for the amount of realized synergies in 2021 that we would get, you know, through the migration of, you know, EBS towards the back half of 2021. So we'd see, you know, synergy capture there. We'd also see a full year impact of the synergy capture when we migrate off of, you know, migrate broker tech off the legacy platforms onto Globex. So the puts and takes, you know, are, you know, in general, a core expense growth rate, any adjustments related to coming out of the COVID, and that's going to be offset by our synergy capture, you know, as we migrate off of, you know, the legacy next systems into our Globex platform. But, I mean, I think the long and short of it, though, is, you know, we as a management team are laser focused on our expenses going into this year and going into next year. This is something that, you know, we are going to have a strong eye on throughout the rest of this year and as we plan for 2021. So, thank you. Thanks for the question, Chris.
Operator
We will go to our next question, coming from Patrick O'Shaughnessy with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Hey, good morning. I'm curious, what should we read into broker tech's U.S. Treasuries market share losses accelerating during the second quarter?
Terry
Sean?
Sean Tully
Yeah, so I haven't seen that, actually. So if you – and let me actually clarify that, right? Sure. If you look at the central limit order book share of the dealer-to-dealer market, our market share over the last 12 months has actually increased. When we look at market share, we look at the dealer-to-dealer market. You may be looking at the dealer-to-customer market plus the dealer-to-dealer market, which we don't compete in the dealer-to-customer market, so that may be a difference there. We have seen growth. a small drop in our share of the overall dealer-to-dealer market. And what I mean in that regard is there is some traction in dealer-to-dealer space coming from relationship-based trading platforms. On that front, we are working hard on a few things. First, we have launched BrokerTech Streams. which is our broker tech dealer-to-dealer relationship-based trading platform, and we are making progress on that front. We also look to enhance that technology, so we are investing in technology that's already been planned to improve that technology so that it becomes more competitive relative to alternative platforms. We also will offer unique benefits because we have the most significant central limit order booking dealer-to-dealer space, once we have that better technology in the direct trading dealer-to-dealer space. So, again, main messages. First, I think you may be looking at the overall treasury market, which would include dealer-to-customer, which we don't compete in. Dealer-to-customer has grown relative to dealer-to-dealer. Within the dealer-to-dealer space, our share of market in terms of central limit order books has actually grown over the last 12 months. If you look at the overall dealer-to-dealer market It has receded, you know, by my calculations, by about five percentage points, maybe six. And, again, relative to the direct trading platforms, and we are building our own and looking to grow. Thanks for the question.
Terry
All right. Thank you.
Sean Tully
Thanks, Patrick.
Operator
We will go next to Kyle Voigt with KBW. Please go ahead.
Kyle Voigt
Hi, thanks for taking my question. Maybe just a cleanup question for John on this net investment income. I think 2Q revenues there imply a bit higher than the two basis point yield you mentioned last quarter. Just wondering if you could give the 2Q average cash balances and the yield on that in 2Q and maybe how those balances and the yield on those that's trended into the third quarter.
John
Sure. Thanks, Terry. Thanks, Kyle. Thanks for your question. Yeah, when you take a look at our non-operating income and expense portion of our income statement, sequentially it's down about $15 million, and that's made up of primarily three items. One, you're correct, when you look at the returns we earn on cash held by clients at the clearinghouse, it came down. As we mentioned last quarter, the interest on excess reserves came down to about 10 basis points in the middle of March. And with that move, we adjusted our rates accordingly. that reduced our net returns from net 19 basis points in Q1 to four basis points in Q2. Now it's partially offset by higher average cash balances, which more than doubled to $83 billion. So that's what drove the sequential reduction. Now, you know, we did have higher, you know, investment returns from the two basis points to approximately four basis points, and that's because we were able to leverage some, or I shouldn't say leverage, but invest in higher-yielding instruments than at the Fed. So we were able to take advantage of some of that, which allowed us to increase our yield from about 2 to 4. In terms of the other items in that section, we did see a reduction in the earnings from the JV of about $2 million. It's important to note that year-to-date, this line is up about 18.6% compared to last year, and then we saw a small reduction in our corporate investing activities of about $1 million. In terms of our leverage, again, as I mentioned last quarter, we did hit our one-times debt-to-EBITDA target, and we paid off the balance of $100 million in commercial paper this quarter. So we have no commercial paper outstanding. So that would impact our interest expense, which would roll into this line. In terms of activity going into this third quarter, when you take a look at the average so far in July, our average cash balance is about 71.5 billion that compares to the average in Q2 of $83.1 billion. So that's your breakdown, Kyle.
Kyle Voigt
That's helpful. And should that four basis point yield be sustainable?
John
You know, it's really, you know, that's You know, I would anticipate, you know, higher than the two basis points at this point. You know, I don't have forecasts in terms of interest rates getting, you know, to the four basis points. But right now, you know, I would say it's going to be higher than the two.
Kyle Voigt
Got it. Thank you.
John
All right. Thanks, Kyle.
Operator
We will take our next question from Ken Hill with Rosenblatt. Please go ahead.
Ken Hill
Hey, good morning. I wanted to ask on the international front here. In 1Q, I think the growth was pretty strong out of Asia and Europe of 73% and 54%. It looks like Asia in 2Q was still slightly positive, but I didn't see a number for Europe. So I was hoping you could provide that number for what Europe looked like in 2Q and then maybe more broadly comment on how the environment trended throughout the quarter. Did you see people coming back into the market as the pandemic might have eased in those areas? Or what are you seeing in the region today as well? Thanks.
Terry
John, you want to start that? I'll ask Julie to join in as well.
John
Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Jerry. Yes, thanks, Ken. So in terms of our international activity, year-to-date, it continues to outpace U.S. performance. For the quarter, our international business faced really tough comparables with As you know, Q2 of 2019 was the second highest quarter for international activity behind Q1 of this year. For the quarter, APAC grew about 1% year over year. Six out of our top ten countries, including our top three of Singapore, Korea, and Hong Kong, were up. And four out of the top ten were up double digits. Looking at EMEA, it was down about 11% year over year. But what we did see is we saw five out of the top ten countries there were up, and three of those top ten countries were up double digits. And the Netherlands, which is our second largest country by volume, was up triple digits. Now, we did see some migration from the U.K. to the Netherlands in anticipation of Brexit, but we also saw very strong growth there as well. So our overall international activity for the quarter was, was in line with full year 2019 ADV, which is a strong year for us in 2019. So I'll turn it over to Julie in terms of the customer experience.
Julie Winkler
Yeah. As you know, much of our international activity is driven by that active trader retail client segment, equities and metals being products that were significantly more transacted by those clients. And when we're looking across this space, Q2 was very strong in revenue for that segment. We saw over 130,000 new accounts coming into our market through that active trader segment. That was up more than 100% year on year. So obviously the volatility is there, but also just this, you know, work from home and lockdown environment is really making that particular segment, you know, trade even more with us. And also just point out, you know, as we think about, you know, those new customers, so over 50% of those new customers that I just spoke about, again, most of those being international, traded at least one of our four e-micro equity index products. And again, 20% of those new customers had only traded an e-micro. And so, you know, we continue to see that being a great new client acquisition driver for us in terms of the product suite. And that we believe is also going to lend well to that e-micro options launch that we have coming up in Q3. Of those new clients that came in from over 166 different countries around the world, So while the U.S. was strong, as John pointed out as well, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, we're definitely seeing those countries and participants within those countries trade more with us as well as the work that we're doing with our broker partners is really helping to drive some of those numbers. Hope that helps.
Mike Carrier
Yeah, thanks.
Terry
Thanks, Ken.
Operator
We will go to our next question from Ken Worthington of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Ken Worthington
Hi, good morning. Maybe just wrapping up on oil and gas trading. So what is your perspective on the impact, if any, from the negative WTI pricing during the April delivery? And has there been any lasting impact on trading behavior or participation? And then why do you think there might have not been greater acceptance of the Houston-based products? They seem like a great product, but they really haven't taken off any views there. Derek?
Derek
Hey, Ken. Thanks for the question. Yeah, good question. When you look at the impacts of both the extreme levels of high volatility and the price uncertainty driven by the huge demand destruction, by the supply concerns as created by the Saudis, and then some of the questions around storage, what we saw from the primary output from the negative pricing on April 20th was, For those firms that had problems with their systems being able to handle negative pricing, we've seen brokers and intermediaries largely update their systems in the anticipation that they need to be able to handle both pricing, but frankly, margining for their clients in case negative pricing happens again going forward. We did see some brokers initially pull out of allowing customers, primarily in the retail side, from being able to trade front-line trading in both WTI and Brent, and that did impact some of the self-directed trading volumes. but we are seeing some of that business come back online now that most of those brokers, if not all, have updated their systems. You know, really the biggest change that we've seen from April, you know, high degrees of volatility, I think we saw front month WTI spike up to close to 160% volatility. And the biggest change over the last three months has we've actually seen the normalization of the overall supply and demand dynamics in the global crude oil market. You certainly saw OPEC out there announcing their decisions to the rollout agreed cuts, we've seen that roll into addressing at least some of the concerns around the supply side of the equation. The demand side of the equation is still in flux right now. What we actually see is with the price of crude oil globally rebounding to kind of the current $40 level on or thereabouts, we're actually seeing a fairly flat forward curve in both WTI and Brent with a fairly static $2 to $2.50 Brent TI spread. So this has, frankly, created a less interesting market for some financial players, and we're seeing that in the reduced volumes and volatility in both June and July. You know, you look at the year-to-date results overall, we did deliver both record Q1 and first half energy revenues of a whole, and we talked about the strength in some of the business we're seeing out of Europe and Asia. And if you actually look at the European revenues, European revenues first half were up 25%. So we continue to expand our non-U.S. customer base, and that's really helped us maintain healthy overall growth, If you look at the energy revenue, despite the overall volumes being up 20%, our rate per contract in energy as a whole has been almost static. I think down maybe half a cent despite the 20% growth overall. One of the really interesting parts of the overall energy franchise we don't talk about nearly as much is natural gas. Natural gas is a business that has been following that same globalization path that we've been seeing and been talking about and have been investing in both in crude oil and in what we've seen in the natural gas market. Year-to-date, our natural gas futures business is up 46%. Natural gas options are up 71%, and that continues to be a huge part of our overall energy story. And this is a market also that we need to remember. We've maintained that 82% market share, and this has been a boost to our overall energy business because our rate per contract in nat gas futures and options is higher than what we see in crude oil. So that's helping the upward pressure on MVP or, excuse me, on the overall RPC as a whole. Very quickly on the Houston contract, it's a great point. You know, we launched that contract back in November of 2018, explicitly focused on those folks involved in the export chain. So remember what that Houston physical contract references. It's to allow customers that if you're involved in the export chain, you need a price for on-the-water Houston-based delivery as oil flows out of Cushing down to Houston, goes on barges, and ships out to Europe and U.S., Well, what we saw in the first half of this year was overall continued production ramps up in the U.S. up until about February. We were producing, I think, in the U.S. about 13 million barrels a day, of which about 3 million were going to export. And we did see that business in HCL, the Houston-based business contract, grow, but it's in the maybe 500 to 800 contracts a day sort of a volume. What we saw following the implosion of the both supply and demand story was not only U.S. production pulled back to about 10, 10.5 million barrels a day, we're actually seeing exports out of the U.S. decline as well. So as exports decline, demand for an export-focused product had declined. So it's still out there. We're actually continuing to still innovate it, talk to our commercial customers about what we can do to enhance that contract, and we've got some conversations going into how to make that more interesting. But that will really be a function, Ken, of what the export situation in the U.S. looks like. The other point that I probably want to touch on very briefly is we continue to see strong growth in the Argus assessed contracts, primarily in Midland and in Houston. And as you remember, trade about 7,000 to 8,000 contracts a day, but have close to 350,000 contracts open interest. And those are additional contracts that allow customers involved in both the domestic market but also the export market to use those contracts. They trade as a basis against WTIs. And those are contracts that allow physical participants to manage their risk out into middle and out into Houston. And so those contracts, we've had that for a number of years. But it takes a long period of time for customers to adapt, particularly the commercial customers, to using those products. And we see that strong continued growth and significant holdings in the OI as potentially a path for how we see that Houston HCL contract evolve. But that will be a function of how we see the export market regain its footing here as the COVID demand impacts start to level out. We start to see miles flown and miles driven increase again. So I hope that answers your questions, Ken.
Ken Worthington
Yep, great. Very comprehensive. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. We will move next to Alex Cram with UBS. Please go ahead.
Alex Cram
Yeah, hello again. Sorry for dragging out the call. Just a couple of follow-ups. One, coming back to the rates franchised, Any updated thoughts on the floor? I know you're reopening, I think, the Eurodollar pit in August, or in a couple of weeks or so. Any updated thoughts of how that may impact the overall trading markets again? I mean, have you looked at data a little bit more closely, how maybe the floor being closed has had a negative impact on the trading markets overall? And then different topic, and I guess it's coming back to the oil question just now, but just one quick follow-up. I mean, I keep on reading more headlines around oil production in the U.S. may never see peaks like we had in the past. So with that backdrop and kind of like that underlying commodity really not growing anymore long term, can you still grow your oil franchise or is this outside of what you just said, Derek?
Terry
Why don't I go ahead and start, and then Derek can talk a little bit about oil. But I don't believe the demise of oil is here just yet. So I would say, Alex, that we've heard this before, and then we saw prices either drop precipitously or rise exponentially. So every time someone counts out any particular product or an asset class, it seems to move. So I would not just count it out just yet. There's still – I think what we're seeing right now is just so much uncertainty on the supply-demand equation as it relates to the COVID because it's not in one central location. It's around the world. So I would not, again, count that asset class out as not being able to move up or down. And Derek can give you more color in just a second. But on the trading floor, I don't believe that not having the floor has impacted the trading business, as you know. We've spent many years with our technology being able to replicate transactions that have been done historically on the trading floor. So I don't see that as anything that's inhibited our business growth, especially as it relates to the Eurodollar contract. I think what Sean referenced is really the most important component of the fundamentals of the Eurodollar contract, which is the The levels of volatility are at not just historic lows but at contract lows since inception. That's a big statement that could have the impact. We are excited to have the floor come back. That being said, on August 10th, as you referenced, the business, as you know, was still roughly 50-50 as it relates to the floor and the screen. We'll see if the participants, when they come back, if they can be able to continue to facilitate that business in the world that we live in today. But we don't believe it's been impacted just by the foreclosure. So with that being said, I'll turn it over to Sean. Arthur Dark.
Derek
Yeah, thanks, Alec. Great question on the oil side. Listen, I think Terry's exactly right. I think there's cyclicality to the oil market. People are calling for the demise of this market, and Terry knows because he was sitting in front of Senate talking about it. know that the market a dollar for a hundred and forty dollars a barrel and there were a lot of prognostications as to what that would lead to and we then have seen you know the other end of the spectrum over the last couple months so I think there is significant fluctuations and a lot of diverse and opinions out there about what OPEC is going to do what Russia is going to do the US capability what certainly the US has done having lifted the export ban back in 2000 and the 1415 and what we've seen that mean to US energy independence has been nothing but positive in terms of job creation and certainly in terms of the U.S.' 's ability to ramp up production from 4 to 5 million barrels a day up to that 13 peak that we hit earlier this year, and exporting in excess of 3 million barrels a day. We expect that that will continue to come back. That is a pure function of the demand side of the equation. The more shut-ins we have, the more states that are locking down, the more countries that are disallowing travel. That's just a cap on demand right now. So once we start to move into... Economies opening once you start to move into vaccines. For us, we see that the lever of growth that we have pulled hard, working in conjunction with Julie's team on the international sales side, is continuing to grow our non-U.S. participation. It has been the hallmark of our growth. We are early markets penetration into Europe and Asia right now, and I think the numbers you see that we continue to talk about certainly validate that. And the growth in our sales organization that Julie has built over the last couple of years with our focus in Europe and Asia, continues to unlock opportunities for us. So we don't see this as a static market that has to be split up based on, you know, who's in the market or what product they're choosing. We see this very much as our ability to access a growing demand customer base in Europe and Asia. And I think it's far too early to call sort of a peak oil conversation here in 2020 when I think you've got this significantly artificial cap on global demand really coming from the COVID situation and coming from economic growth. So that's how we think about it, and, Alex, the way we continue to invest in the business as a whole, internationalizing our business, expanding WTI as a global benchmark, growing our options business, and then expanding education out into Europe and Asia for those customers to continue to grow that high-margin business for us. So hopefully that puts a little extra color on top of what Terry was talking about earlier.
Alex Cram
Yeah, very good. Thanks again. Thanks, Alex.
Operator
Thank you. We will now go to our final question from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Brian Bedell
Great. Thanks for taking my follow-ups, and thanks for extending the call. Just two quick follow-ups. Just, John, back on the expenses on the synergies, just wanted to verify. We're exiting at $110 million of synergies at year-end after the broker tech conversion. Should we be considering that like an $85 million tailwind to the expenses and reducing expenses given the $25 million I think you talked about for 2020? That's the first question. The second question was just to go back to what Julie said about retail. I'm not sure if I missed it, but the proportion of volumes from retail in the second quarter versus the first quarter and Do you see – is it just – is it all concentrated in equities and metals? Are you seeing any in energy? And just along those lines, the RPC dynamic going into the third quarter, obviously, you know, it's a headwind on the equity side, but we've also seen really good RPC build in energy. Do you see that sustainable into 3Q?
John
Hi, Brian. This is John. I will – I'll take the integration question, and then I'll mention kind of what we're seeing in the equities RPC, which I think will be helpful for you as you think about the third quarter. So in terms of our integration, we had a target of $50 million in terms of run rate synergies at the end of last year. We hit $64 million. We've got a target of – $110 million at the end of this year, and we're on track to meet that $110 million. Obviously, the organization is focused on exceeding it, but we're well on our way to achieving the $110. So going into next year, we would have a $46 million reduction in our cost base. The difference between the $64 million that we ended last year and and the $110 million that we got targeted this year. So that $46 million would be what would allow us to reduce our costs going into next year, and that would give us $110 million run rate synergies, you know, based on, you know, what we had, you know, projected or forecasted with the acquisition of NEXT. So, you know, that's on the integration side. Then when you look at the RPC side, I think it's really important on the equities to really understand the product mix. So it's a product mix story for equities this quarter. As you guys know, our micros products are a tremendous success, and sequentially the trading is up 30%. Now, it's a premium price product from a risk-adjusted perspective, but has a lower RPC than our E-minis. In Q1, micros were 22% of our total volume, and in Q2, they were 34% of our total volume. Now, a couple things to note, and Sean touched on this a little earlier, but I'll reiterate it. The micros RPC increased from 11.2 cents in Q1 to 12.5 cents in Q2, and they're up from 6.8 cents the same quarter last year. When you look at the – when you look at the equity RPC excluding micros, that RPC increased from 76 cents in Q1 to 80.4 cents in Q2, and it's up from 73 cents from the same quarter last year. That's increasing because we did make some pricing adjustments in our equity complex, but also we find our clients are using higher price um, products like, you know, B tech, like our dividend, um, futures and like the total return futures. So, you know, the equity, um, in our equity, uh, complex, the RPCs are increasing. Uh, it's really, it's just, it's a mixed shift story, um, in our equities. Um, so that, um, those were the, the two. And I think, um, I'll turn over to Julie for, for your third question.
Julie Winkler
Sure. So on the, um, The product mix with our active trader segment, you are correct. We did see some declines, as Derek pointed out earlier, given the access on the brokers to providing to clients for the WTI. We saw some declines. Year to date, we're still up on energy as well as up significantly with our equity index and our metals business as well as FX and our ag and interest rates is pretty flat. We've also seen a trend, particularly from our APAC clients, of transitioning from WTI into nat gas. And, you know, that is something that, you know, is definitely positive across the energy product mix for this segment. So that's something that we are watching as well.
Brian Bedell
And just the overall mix of retail within your ADVs for N2Q versus 1Q across the franchise.
Julie Winkler
John, do you have that number?
John
I think I have it. I can follow up later. It's fine.
Brian Bedell
I can follow up later. Thanks so much for all the detail. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. This concludes today's question and answer session. Mr. Duffy, at this time, I will turn the conference to you for any final remarks.
Terry
Thank you. And, you know, thank you all. I appreciate it very much, and I know the team does as well. You know, we live in very interesting times, and we truly believe that managing risk will be critically important as we continue to evolve, not only from COVID but other issues that are affecting the entire world. For all the reasons that Sean and Derek and Julie and John explained, we will feel very optimistic about our position. As a team, I will tell you that we remain laser-focused on innovation, client outreach, the things we talked about, capital efficiencies, the integration of NECs. And I'll stress this again. We are laser-focused on expense discipline. We will continue to be disciplined as we run this business on everyone's behalf. So, We thank you for your time this morning. We appreciate your questions, and we look forward to talking to you soon. And we wish you and your families all the health and safety. And thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. And thank you all for your attention. This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.
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