Options News
The OIC Announces March Options Trading Grew 23%
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Apr 14, 2008 - 6:20:02 PM

The OIC Announces March Options Trading Grew 23%

The Options Industry Council (OIC) announced that total options trading volume in March reached 282,000,233 contracts, a 23.36 percent increase over the year-ago level of 228,595,638 contracts.

Total options daily trading volume for 2008 is averaging 14,100,012 contracts, a 35.7 percent increase over the 10,390,711 contracts averaged for the same period in 2007. Year-to-date total options volume is up 44.99 percent over the same point in 2007 with 14,484,970 contracts.

OIC also reported that equity options volume increased 28.17 percent over the same period last year with 259,432,073 contracts trading in March 2008 compared with 202,416,837 contracts trading in March 2007. Year-to-date equity options volume is up 47.55 percent over the same point in 2007 with 13,328,234 contracts. Average daily equity options volume is 12,971,604 contracts, up 40.98 percent over the same period last year.

A new top 10 volume day was achieved on March 19 for both total options and equity options. A total 21,486,464 contracts were traded, making this the sixth highest volume day and 19,747,790 equity options contracts were traded, making this the seventh highest volume day for equity options.

OIC is an industry cooperative funded by the American Stock Exchange, Boston Options Exchange, Chicago Board Options Exchange, International Securities Exchange, NASDAQ OMX, NYSE Arca, Philadelphia Stock Exchange and The Options Clearing Corporation.

The International Securities Exchange (ISE) reported that in March 2008, its options exchange traded an average daily volume of 4.2 million contracts. The ISE Stock Exchange traded an average daily volume of 91.7 million shares in the same period.

Average daily trading volume for all options contracts increased 49.8% to 4.2 million contracts in March as compared to 2.8 million contracts during the same period in 2007. Total equity and index options volume for the month increased 36.2% to 84.9 million contracts from 62.3 million contracts in the same year-ago period.  

On a year-to-date basis, average daily trading volume of equity and index options increased 53.6% to 4.3 million contracts traded as compared to 2.8 million contracts traded in the prior year.   Total year-to-date equity and index volume through March 2008 increased 53.6% to 259.8 million contracts from 169.2 million contracts in the same period last year.