The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) says that last week was the second consecutive week in which it experienced the busiest weekly trading activity for options on the S&P 500 Index (SPX) in its history. Volume during the week of March 12-19, 2007 totalled a reported 5,051,009 contracts traded, besting the previous record of 4.35 million contracts set just a week ago (March 5-9, 2007).
Last week’s record SPX volume was driven, in part, by the highest single-day of SPX trading in CBOE history when 1,833,022 contracts traded on Wednesday, March 14, 2007, which topped the previous high of 1,287,151 contracts traded on May 19, 2006. Month-to-date, SPX volume stands at 11,235,112 contracts, with an average daily volume of 936,259 contracts traded during March.
During 2006, SPX was CBOE’s most-actively traded product with volume totalling a record 104.3 million contracts. SPX average daily volume of 415,588 contracts on the year was an increase of 46% over the previous year. During February 2007, SPX average daily volume at CBOE was 529,671 contracts, up 50% from February 2006.