ISE traded more equity options than any other US options exchange in May, according to trading volume analysis. ISE's equity options market share was 29% in May, a 38% increase compared to 21% for the same year-ago period.
ISE, which was founded in May 2000, emerged as the largest US equity options exchange earlier this year after implementing several trading system and market place innovations. In January, ISE introduced the "one size fits all" trading initiative that insures all market participants receive the full size available at the quote for their orders. In February, ISE implemented ISEspreads, which enhanced the execution of multi-legged options orders. In March, ISE introduced VPN-CLICK, a Virtual Private Network connectivity solution that allows ISE member firms to route orders to ISE over a low-cost, secure Internet connection.
The growing acceptance in the options industry of ISE's initiatives is contributing to ISE's trading volume growth. Indeed, ISE's innovations are attracting more customer volume to the exchange. In ISE's listings in May, ISE executed more customer order-flow than any other exchange. Overall, in its listings, ISE traded more volume in 366 of its 542 issues than any other options exchange.
In May, ISE traded 20.1 million equity options contracts, up 69% from 11.9 million equity options contracts in the same year-ago period. Average daily volume in May was 960,177 contracts, up 77% from 543,114 contracts in the same year-ago period.
ISE was the lead market in May for options on 23 of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which represented 72% of the index's total weighting. ISE was the lead market for options on 219 of the stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, which represented 62% of the index's total weighting. ISE was the lead market for options on 279 stocks of the 1000 stocks in the Russell 1000 Index, which represented 58% of the index's total weighting.
