OCC announced that a new daily options trading volume record was set on Friday, August 5, 2011 when 39,530,495 contracts were traded. This is 9.41 percent higher than the previous record of 36,132,133 contracts set on August 4, 2011.
Equity options trading also set a new record with 35,817,166 contracts, an 8.42 percent increase over the previous record of 33,036,121 contracts traded on August 4, 2011.
Total volume for the first week of August was 145,178,304 contracts, equal to 51 percent of the total volume recorded in August 2010. A total of 2,187,211 transactions took place on August 5, resulting in $16.2 billion in premium changing hands.