South China Morning Post reports the exchange's chief operating officer Frederick Grede as saying the exchange needs more time to prepare marketing for the introduction of the new products as well as time to study which products to introduce first.

The new products to be launched would be targeted mainly at retail investors, said the exchange's chief operating officer Frederick Grede.

"At present, the retail participation in our futures market is lower than in other overseas markets. We would like to see more retail investors trading on the local derivatives market," he said. In Hong Kong, less than 40% of the futures market's turnover was traded by retail investors, Grede said. This was lower than in South Korea, where 70% of futures trading was done by retail investors.

Local brokers suppose that the delay may be associated with the late and troublesome introduction of the Exchange's on-line trading system, or with choppy market conditions in the last few weeks. But the South China Morning Post says that Mr Grede rejects such claims. 'It is always hard to wait for the perfect timing to launch new futures products,' he said.

The Exchange recently launched 'mini-futures', also part of its effort to encourage retail participation in the market, and these have got off to a good start. At only 20% of the size of 'grown-up' futures, the new contracts have attracted mostly retail players, many of them thought to be new to the market. Trading volumes have already reached 2,000 contracts a day, with 1,300 open contracts currently, according to the newspaper.