CBOE Year-End Volume Surpasses 283 Million Contracts, Up 6% For Year; December Volume Increases 53%

The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the world's largest options exchange, announced today that volume at CBOE for 2003 totaled 283,946,495 contracts, a rise of 6% when compared to the year-ago level. The 283 million contracts traded in 2003 represented the third highest annual volume figure in CBOE history.

Exchange Volume, Year-End & December, 2003:

Total Volume
2003: 283,946,495 contracts
+6% vs 2002 volume of 267,616,496 contracts
December: 27,207,188 contracts
+53% vs year-ago (Dec 02); +18% vs previous month (Nov 03)

Average Daily Volume
2003: 1,126,772 contracts
+6% vs 2002 average daily volume of 1,061,970 contracts
December: 1,236,690 contracts
+46% vs year-ago (Dec 02); +2% vs previous month (Nov 03)

Open Interest
2003: 126,320,572 contracts
+35% vs 2002 Open Interest of 93,472,074 contracts
December: 126,320,572 contracts
+35% vs year-ago (Dec 02); -2% vs previous month (Nov 03)

Year-End & December highlights at CBOE included:

December's 53% increase in volume was the highest single-month gain since March 2000.
S&P 500 Index (SPX) was the most actively traded index option as December volume increased 59% over December 2002 with a total of 3,761,302 contracts traded.
In 2003, CBOE monthly volume posted increases over the year-ago levels in 8 of 12 months.
The top 5 stock option classes traded at CBOE during 2003 were Microsoft (MSFT), Cisco Systems (CSCO), General Electric (GE), Intel Corp. (INTC) and Citigroup, Inc. (C).
The CBOE S&P 500 BuyWrite Index (BXM) was up 19.4% compared to its closing price in 2002. The BXM is a benchmark index that measures potential returns of a theoretical portfolio that systematically sells S&P 500 Index (SPX) call options against a portfolio of Standard and Poor's 500 Index stocks.
During December, CBOE added an additional 146 classes to CBOEdirect HyTS, its new hybrid trading system. CBOE now lists a total of 368 classes on Hybrid.