The Options Clearing Corporation Announces Total Contract Volume In February Grew 3%

The Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) announced today that total OCC volume reached 264,435,951 contracts in February. This represents a 3 percent increase over the February 2009 volume of 256,464,343 contracts. OCC year to date total volume is up 12% from 2009, coming in at 577,974,825 contracts.

Options: Exchange-listed options trading in the U.S for the month of February was up 2% from the previous year. Index options trading rose 28% higher than the previous February with 22,511,881 contracts. Expansion of OCC’s options clearing business continues to grow as BATS Options recently joined OCC’s participant exchanges.

Futures: Futures cleared by OCC in February rose to 2,001,726 from 165,392 in February 2009. This increase is due to the addition of new futures exchanges just coming online with OCC early last year. Equity futures had an increase of 139% over the same month last year.

Securities Lending: OCC's stock loan program, including OTC and AQS, saw an average daily notional value of $13,481,461,210, a 1 percent increase from January. As OCC expanded its stock loan program last year, it also changed the program measurement process. Therefore, precise year-on-year data will not be available until mid-year. However, the past year has seen a noticeable trend toward increasing average daily stock loan transactions.