On Friday, the Options Industry Council (OIC) announced that 361,071,621 total options contracts traded in January. This represents a 7.65 percent increase from January 2012 ?when 335,399,999 contracts traded, and the highest monthly volume since May 2012.
January average daily volume was 17,193,887 contracts, a 2.53 percent increase over the previous January’s 16,770,000 contract average. Equity options volume was 327,265,575 contracts, a 4.43 percent rise from the previous January.
According to OIC’s press release, January’s volume marks the second highest January trading volume on record behind January 2011.The month also represented a strong start to 2013 as average daily volume jumped 7.36 percent higher than the 2012’s average daily volume of 16,015,416 contracts.