Beyond Borders: Starting 2025 Strong

Dave Howson, Global President, reflects on a strong 2024 at Cboe and looks ahead to 2025.

2024 was a strong year at Cboe as we continued to innovate, enhance market accessibility and deliver trusted solutions to meet the needs of an ever-evolving market. Access to global markets was a key focus in 2024. Our markets are more connected than ever and gaining deeper insight into different markets is a priority for investors everywhere. As I wrote about in October, the U.S. markets are especially of interest to investors around the world. We made strides in growing our import business—helping foreign investors access U.S. markets—last year with new products, like options on VIX futures, and expanding accessibility of our market data products over various channels including Cboe Global Cloud and Cboe DataShop, with more to come in 2025.

On the flipside of that, we are also working to bring our proven U.S. playbooks to other parts of the world. As retail trading grows in the U.S., we see the same potential in Europe and Asia Pacific. I wrote more about this on Cboe Insights at the start of 2024, and it is a trend that we will continue to watch in 2025.

While U.S. retail trading may be ahead of other countries, it is still continuously evolving. Last year, Fred Tomczyk shared his perspective about embracing the influx of retail investors with access, tools and education. This is an essential piece of our playbook and something Cboe worked hard at throughout the past year.

We were especially excited to join Robinhood at the inaugural HOOD Summit to discuss options trading with conference attendees and announce the upcoming launch of index options on Robinhood. Launching index options on Robinhood — along with the proper education and tools— was a big step toward enhancing the accessibility of options trading in 2024. This year, we look forward to supporting the full launch of index options on Robinhood and helping more people gain access to a time-tested tool to hedge risk, speculate and generate income. Robinhood joins a growing group of retail brokers offering Cboe products, including Charles Schwab, Interactive Brokers, moomoo, Tasty Trade, Trade Station, TradeUP, Trade View, Tradier, Trading Block and Webull.

Options can be an important tool for investors as we prepare for a leadership change in the U.S. later this month. Like any major event or government transition, the markets are likely to respond. Empowering people with the right tools, like options, is important to a healthy market ecosystem. With this change and any other events the world faces this year, Cboe will be here with the products, tools and education needed to help investors everywhere navigate the markets with confidence.

In addition to the focus on global connections and the growth of retail, last year many investors turned their attention to the markets in Japan, where continued growth became the dominant headline of the year. We see the potential in Japan and are proud of the strength of Cboe Japan, which achieved record market share last year. We also acquired a minority stake in Japannext last year, further expanding our presence in the country. This year, I am excited to continue investing time and resources in the Japanese market. Again, leveraging our import/export approach will help grow the Japanese market and create access to U.S. and European markets for investors in Japan. 

Below, I share more about our accomplishments from 2024 across our global business lines. It was a strong year at Cboe, as we remained focused on delivering trusted markets around the globe. That will remain our priority in 2025, and we look forward to collaborating with you to help you achieve your goals.

2024 at Cboe

Global Derivatives

Options trading continued to be front and center this year, with Cboe’s total options average daily volume reaching 14.9 million contracts, along with record index options trading in SPX® Index options, VIX® Index options and XSP® options ADV. SPX options annual ADV was 3.11 million, VIX options ADV was 830,000 and XSP® options ADV was 69,600. Additionally, in Derivatives we launched several new products, including options on VIX futures, variance futures, Bitcoin ETF Index options and iBoxx Emerging Market Bond Index futures. As options trading continues to grow, especially among the retail crowd, we prioritized accessibility and education this year, starting Q4 at Robinhood’s HOOD Summit and announcing that index options would soon be available on the platform. Last but not least, Cboe Europe Derivatives Exchange continued to grow as we export the U.S. options trading blueprint to Europe. Read more about Global Derivatives in Cathy Clay’s year-end note.

Cboe Data Vantage

This year, Data Vantage was focused on alignment, optimization and a rebrand! Its new name and refined structure are setting the stage for 2025. The team’s client-first approach will enable continued growth of our market data and access services, global indices and risk and market analytics. Read much more about Cboe Data Vantage in Adam Inzirillo’s year-end note.

Cboe Clear 

Cboe Clear Europe won the inaugural Clearing House of the Year at the 2024 Trade Awards for good reason. Cboe Clear Europe is clearing 46% of all European interoperable flow, representing 37% of all European cash equity clearing. The clearing house processed 117.5 million client trades in October, its highest monthly volume in 2024. This year it cleared its first trades on Deutsche Börse, introducing competitive clearing to the German market. European SFT Clearing for equities went live across 19 markets covering 10 thousand ISINs on November 28.

European Equities

2024 was the year that Periodic Auctions went mainstream in European equities, with Cboe the leading player in a category that reached a record 7.2% of pan-European trading in October (up from 5.7% in January). Cboe’s market share in the category now stands at around 85%, its highest level in over five years. The service is a great example of our product innovation driving increased usage of a low market impact differentiated service that improves execution outcomes for end investors.  

Cboe BIDS Europe has consistently been Europe’s largest block trading service throughout 2024, with new members helping expand its buyside participation to over 280 firms.

Australia

Cboe Australia achieved record market share in 2024 and had 10 record months throughout the year. In the first full year that Cboe Australia was operating on Cboe Technology, the market had 100% uptime. Additionally, a series of technology enhancements improved quality, resilience and latency on Cboe Australia.  

Japan

Cboe Japan market share continued to grow throughout the year, hitting a record 5.5% market share in Q2. Additionally, Cboe acquired a minority stake in Japannext, further strengthening our presence in the country where we see great opportunity for Cboe. 

North American Equities

In November, North American Equities transitioned the EDGA Equities exchange from an inverted model to a maker-taker exchange. This was done in response to trends in the market and customer demand, which proved successful from the start, with total market share increasing 64 basis points month-over-month on day one. 

In Canada, Canadian Depositary Receipts (CDR) continued to grow in popularity and Cboe BIDS Canada recently hit record volumes with 84,005,450 total shares traded and a record average daily volume (ADV) of 3,818,430 in October.  

Global Listings

Cboe surpassed 1,000 Exchange Traded Products listed across its global network this year, a major milestone for the Global Listings team. There are now more than 120 issuer partners that currently list ETF products on Cboe's global network of stock exchanges in the U.S., Canada, UK, European Union and Australia. 

Global FX

Cboe FX achieved record growth for the fourth consecutive year and hit numerous milestones. On November 5, Non-Deliverable Forwards (NDFs) volume surpassed three billion for the first time ever and Cboe FX Full Amount reached a new high watermark of 32.8 billion. This year, U.S. Treasuries reached a daily record of 599 million. 

^{The information in this article is provided for general education and information purposes only. No statement(s) within this article should be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell a security or futures contract, as applicable or to provide investment advice. Supporting documentation for any claims, comparisons, statistics or other technical data in this article is available by contacting Cboe Global Markets at http://www.cboe.com/Contact.}

^{There are important risks associated with transacting in any of the Cboe Company products discussed here. Before engaging in any transactions in those products, it is important for market participants to carefully review the disclosures and disclaimers.}

^{This e-mail has been sent to you because you: 1) are a current or former subscriber to cboe.com; 2) have requested information from Cboe in the past; or 3) have been identified as an investment professional with interest in the subject matter.}

^{©2024 Cboe Exchange, Inc. All rights reserved.}

^{Update your preferences or unsubscribe. To unsubscribe by postal mail, please write to: Cboe Customer Experiences, 433 W. Van Buren St., Chicago, IL 60607}