The Options Industry Council (OIC) announced today that for the fourth consecutive month, options exchanges set a new record for month-end equity options open interest with 130,701,418 contracts. This beats the record of 128,369,293 contracts set in June, and is a 22.7 percent increase over equity options open interest of 106,462,423 contracts in July 2003.
Other volume highlights for July include:
- Year-to-date equity options volume through July was 683,590,256 contracts, an increase of 37.38 percent over the 457,285,622 contracts traded in the same time frame in 2003.
- Average daily equity options volume in July was 4,054,735 contracts, an 18.81 percent increase over July 2003 average daily volume of 3,412,927 contracts.
- July equity options volume of 85,149,440 contracts (36,741,654 puts and 48,407,786 calls) surpassed July 2003 volume of 75,084,400 contracts (30,042,872 puts and 45,041,528 calls) by 13.4 percent.
- July’s highest volume day occurred on July 16 with 6,219,493 contracts.
- July’s highest day for equity options open interest occurred on July 16 with 141,441,572 contracts
“Many people think of the summer months as ‘slow’ in terms of investment activity, and this simply isn’t the case when it comes to options,” said Paul Stevens, President, OIC. “The high open interest in equity options tells us that investors are using options as a long-term investment tool; and the continued growth in overall volume indicates increased confidence in the options product.”
