By Tom Burnett CFA
The Options Clearing Corporation (“OCC”) has announced that March 2021 trading volume set a record for monthly trading activity. Total cleared contracts exceeded 904 million for the month, up 34.8% from the March 2020 volume. March was also the end of the highest quarterly trading volume since the OCC commenced operations in 1973.
These records followed the 2020 record annual activity which cleared 7.52 billion contracts, up 51% from the total 2019 annual volume.
Through the first three months of 2021, total equity and index listed option volume averaged 41.9 million contracts per day, up 49.8% from the comparable figure for the first quarter of 2020.
The OCC now provides clearing and settlement services for 19 exchanges and several trading platforms engaged in the markets for listed options and futures.
Tom Burnett CFA is Director of Research