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Markets have reached record highs. The S&P 500 Index has returned 4.7% year-to-date, supported by strong first quarter earnings and significant investor interest in artificial intelligence. On the surface, it looks like a strong rally, but market appearances don't always tell the full story.
April was another strong volume month for U.S. options with 20.63 million contracts traded. Cboe's proprietary index options set a single-day record on April 14 with 9.0 million contracts traded.
The U.S. cash equities market saw a pullback in April, with total market Average Daily Volume (ADV) decreasing 12.99% month-over-month to 17.8 billion shares. Against this backdrop of declining volume, market share shifted toward off-exchange venues, which captured nearly half of all volume. Cboe EDGX® Equities Exchange (EDGX) stood out, increasing its market share to 4.5%. Within on-exchange trading, Cboe maintained a strong 21.0% market share.
At 1/10th the size of SPX, XSP offers very similar notional size, weekly expirations, and PM-settlement to SPY, but with even more potential benefits.
Many trading strategies, such as covered-call or spread trading, involve options writing (selling), where the primary risks are market movement and volatility. But there's another risk if you happen to be writing options on dividend-paying equities like SPY ETFs: early assignment.
There are a number of different types of options contracts available on broad-based U.S. equity indexes. Some of the most actively traded products include options on SPY, SPX and XSPSM (Mini-SPX). They all track the S&P 500® and both SPY and XSP options have the same notional size, making them somewhat interchangeable. A key difference, however, is settlement style.
European equity trading volumes shifted towards Dark order books, Periodic Auctions and Systematic Internalisers during April. Cboe Europe maintained its position as the largest European exchange by market share, delivering strong performance across its diverse range of execution mechanisms.
In April 2026, Cboe FX Spot Average Daily Volume (ADV) reached $53.8 billion. Cboe SEF ADV1 topped $4.0 billion, representing a 17.2% increase from April 2025's ADV of $3.4 billion.
As of November 3, 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted amendments to certain rules of Regulation National Market System (Regulation NMS), one of which was introducing a new price-tiered round lot framework for NMS stocks. Under the new framework, round lot sizes are scaled to share price: 100 shares for stocks priced at or below $250, 40 shares for stocks priced between $250 and $1,000, 10 shares for stocks between $1,000 and $10,000 and one share for stocks priced above $10,000.
