BEIJING -- The cumulative turnover of nationwide futures markets hit a historic high of 206.42 trillion yuan ($33.3 trillion) in the first nine months, up 72.6 percent from the same period in 1993 when the statistic was first tracked, according to latest data from the China Futures Association.

From January to September, a total of 1.59 billion contracts changed hands, up 55.5 percent year-on-year.

Following the debut of treasury bond futures and steam coal futures in September, petroleum asphalt futures, iron ore futures and egg futures will be publicly traded in October, which will bring a golden age of development for the domestic futures market, according to insiders.

Wang Jun, vice president of Beijing CIFCO, attributed the historic high to four factors: first, the volatile stock market drove capital to stock index futures; second, prices and profits of finished goods dropped, leaving market participants more interested in hedging and arbitrage in futures market; third, trading volumes of silver and gold futures grew substantially from a year earlier; fourth, agricultural commodity futures were hot with the sector's trading volume taking up more than 30 percent of the market's total.

Influenced by factors such as decreased trading days and frequent global macro events, turnover and trading volume in September dropped compared to August.

Trading volumes of stock index, precious metals, nonferrous metals , building materials and agricultural products all dropped from August.

Wang said the fall was caused by a capital departure before the Mid-autumn Festival and National Day holidays, and major macro events such as the Federal Reserve meeting, which made participants withdraw capital to wait and see.