U.S. equities total market Average Daily Volume (ADV) rose 2.3% month-over-month to 20.5 billion shares, surpassing February 2026 record volume and up 27.8% year-over-year.
As the largest U.S. options exchange operator, Cboe's pool of derivatives data and proprietary pricing algorithms enable its Global Indices team to develop complex index concepts that are central to Cboe’s ecosystem. Read on for a recap of the Cboe Global Indices launches and milestones achieved in the first quarter of 2026.
In March 2026, Cboe FX Spot Average Daily Volume (ADV) reached $74.5 billion, a new all-time high, and a 42.9% increase from March 2025's ADV of $52.1 billion.
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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.
Q1 2026 saw record trading volumes in European equities, driven by strong investor interest and ongoing geopolitical developments. For Cboe Europe, it was a record quarter as we retained our position as Europe’s largest equities exchange.
The industry moves closer to making around-the-clock trading for U.S. equities markets a reality each day, and I am proud that Cboe is at the forefront of this evolution. We have officially submitted a proposal to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch near 24x5 U.S. Equities trading on Cboe EDGX Equities Exchange (EDGX) in December 2026, subject to regulatory review and industry development.
European equity trading volumes reached all-time highs in February, with Cboe Europe posting record monthly volumes for total trading, Periodic Auctions, Cboe BIDS Europe and Cboe Closing Cross (3C)
