Options Activity Review and Preview

The listed options industry has seen remarkable growth over the past five years, fueled by strong returns for U.S. equity investors and innovations among exchanges, brokerages and service providers. These advancements have reduced friction, expanded use cases and attracted new participants to the market.

Average daily options volume has grown from 20 million contracts in 2019 to 58 million contracts in January 2025. In notional terms, today’s options flow exceeds $3 trillion in value — more than five times the daily turnover of the 5,700 underlying stocks and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Dominant trends in recent years have involved growing retail adoption and short-dated options (0DTE) trading, a significant increase in the number of ETFs that use options, and the increasing use of FLEX options to customize exposure and implement securities-financing operations.

Looking ahead to 2025, several trends are expected to shape the options landscape. A new exchange and a new trading floor are expected to launch later this year, providing participants with additional routes and execution alternatives. Retail trading is likely to increase based on enhanced accessibility and platform evolution, including third-party automated trading apps and overseas expansion by several leading brokers.

ETFs and indices tracking crypto-assets, which saw a sharp jump in 2024 upon approval of spot Bitcoin products, may see further growth as new assets and asset-mixes are introduced. FLEX options — which experienced triple-digit volume growth in 2024 — will likely expand as additional venues add the product and complex order types evolves to include offerings like buffer-protect and yield ‘flavors’ of popular products to meet the needs of end-users including buffer-protect and yield ‘flavors’ of popular products.

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