Hi, Mike.
Michael Vinciquerra – BMO Capital Markets
First thing, just on the energy space, two things there, I guess. WTI has, I guess, been the weak contract in terms of looking at oil and nat gas and what not trading early this year. Any particular reason you guys feel like that product had a little less success than maybe Brent and some of the others? And then tied to that, there''s a lot of noise around the Argus Sour Crude contract and we haven''t heard any update. Is that contract out there in trading at all these days?
Rick Redding
Mike, this is Rick. WTI has actually been a fairly strong performer. I mean, if you look at the fourth quarter, even into January, it''s one of those areas with the macroeconomic conditions the way they are, people are trading that a lot. So just want to be careful with your statement. As far as the Argus Sour products, both CME and the ICE have launched product there not doing anything at this stage, because we''ve saying it will take a while for those benchmarks to gain some acceptance. What we have done, though, is some of the components within the Index actually are trading, the March product in particular. So pretty much what we said would happen is happening and we continue to look forward as the industry evolves or how it moves. I mean again, remember, Mike, that all this stuff is based off WTI pricing. So it actually is probably pretty favorable for our WTI business.
Michael Vinciquerra – BMO Capital Markets
Very good. We''ve got to look at those statistics again. Sorry if I''m looking at something wrong. And just your early success with the Ultra Bond future. Any sense for how broad the potential user base is there? Is it as broad as it is for all the other treasury products?
Rick Redding
Yeah. We have gotten off to a great start there. In three weeks -- in the histories of the futures world, you''re hard-pressed to find anything done this well. Part of it has been, obviously, we''ve listened to the marketplace. We''ve adopted our product development to the credit crisis. This is a product the market needed because the duration of all of these instruments has come in quite a bit given the rate environment. This has actually been broadly used by both buying and sell side at this point. And the other thing that is encouraging is, as we thought, we see people also spreading this against the 300-year Treasury Bond. So this has been a phenomenal uptake in the product. And one of the good things, as Craig mentioned, that 44,000 plus of open interest, over 5,000 of it is in the June contract. So you''re starting to see people already think about the future of what that contract would hold.
Michael Vinciquerra – BMO Capital Markets
Great. Congratulations, guys. Thanks, guys.
Craig S. Donohue
Thank you.
Operator
We''ll go next to Howard Chen of Credit Suisse.
Howard Chen – Credit Suisse
Good morning, everybody.
Craig S. Donohue
Hi, Howard.
Howard Chen – Credit Suisse
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