ISE U.S. Regional Banks Index

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International Securities Exchange offers options on the cash-settled ISE U.S. Regional Banks Index (JVX). The ISE proprietary index includes U.S. regional banks that operate in limited regions and are active in small and medium corporate lending and retail banking. Companies primarily engaged in investment banking, brokerage, and asset management are not included in the index, nor are thrifts and mortgage banks.

With 20 component stocks, the Index attempts to capture at least two-thirds of the entire U.S. regional bank's market capitalization. Due to the non-uniform weight distribution across entire industries, an equal-weighted methodology or a “modified market capitalization-weighted" methodology is used to adjust the weighting of component stocks, and individual component weightings are limited to 25% at semi-annual reviews. Quarterly rebalancing events are used to “re-set” the weighting of each component so each component has an equal influence on the index performance.

Some of the regional banks included in the Index include: SunTrust Banks, National City Corp., Fifth Third Bancorp., City National Corp., and UnionBanCal Corp.

The ISE U.S. Regional Banks Index is one of eight ISE industry indexes that also include: ISE Oil & Gas Services; ISE Semiconductor Index; ISE Integrated Oil; ISE Gold; ISE Semiconductors; ISE Biotech & Pharmaceuticals; ISE Homebuilders and ISE SINdex.

As of Nov. 1, 2007, there are 31 ISE index options listed.

Contract Overview

Full specifications can be found at the ISE web site.

Trading hours	9:30 A.M. - 4:00 P.M. Eastern Time (New York time).
Expiration months	Four near-term months followed by one additional month from the March quarterly cycle (March, June, September and December).
Strike price intervals	At least $2.50.
Minimum trading increments	The minimum trading increment for an options contract trading at less than $3.00 is $0.05. The minimum trading increment for an options contract trading at $3.00 or higher is $0.10.