Dec. 1 at 8:48 PM
US options market heading for 6th straight year of record volume
Every listed US options trade clears thru The Options Clearing Corp, a central counterparty that handles more than 70M+ contracts/day (cleared 12.3B contracts in FY24)
Trades are submitted to the OCC by its members — who help trades get to the clearing house & act as guarantors in case their clients go bust
Out of dozens of members, top 5 clearing houses contributed almost half of the OCC’s
$20B default fund in 2Q25
3 largest are
$BAC $GS &
$C handling most positions (45%-60%) from market-makers (Citadel,
$VIRT & Susquehanna, etc)
Immediate concern is that these banks may run out of capacity to support the growth of the listed derivatives market, w/ OCC avg daily volume soaring +52% y/y in Oct
Move to 24/7 trading may put even more pressure on capacity
Only a handful of clearing brokers have the ability to cross-margin b/n futures & options
BAC has raised options clearing rates from
$0.02-
$0.03 to
$0.04/contract
