The Options Industry Council (OIC) announced today that 320,209,356 total options contracts were traded in December, which is a 2.46 percent increase compared to the previous December when 312,528,471 contracts were traded.
Total options trading volume for the year stood at 4,111,275,659 contracts, an increase of 2.68 compared to last year’s 4,003,871,308 total options contracts exchanged. This marks the third consecutive year annual volume was more than 4 billion contracts while 2013 becomes the second highest volume year on record. Equity options volume came in at 3,725,864,134 contracts, 1.20 percent more than the 3,681,820,659 contracts traded the year prior.
Last year also saw $1.2 trillion in options premium change hands, the seventh consecutive year above $1 trillion.
OCC also reported these volume highlights for the month of December:
- December equity options volume was 289,995,333 contracts, 1.58 percent more than the 285,492,281 contracts in the previous December.
- December average daily total options volume was 15,248,065 contracts compared to 15,626,424 contracts in December 2013, down 2.42 percent.
- Month-end open interest for December 2013 was 291,975,083 contracts, up 10.02 percent from December 2012 with 262,727,950 contracts.
More details on historical options trading data are available at www.OptionsEducation.org.