OCC June options volume jumps 45% as ETF options surge

Metric (June 2026)	Contracts	Change y/y
Total cleared volume	1,608,649,778	+45.0%
Equity options	778,333,823	+28.6%
ETF options	689,472,511	+69.7%
Index options	135,685,225	+44.0%
Total options	1,603,491,559	+45.0%
Futures	5,158,219	+39.5%
YTD average daily volume	71,133,511	+23.5%

The Options Clearing Corporation reported on July 2, 2026 that June options volume cleared through its system reached about 1.61 billion contracts, up 45% from June 2025. Unlike April, when OCC-cleared futures declined, every product category grew in June, with ETF options doing most of the work.

ETF options drove the jump. Volume in that category rose 69.7% to roughly 689.5 million contracts. Two months earlier, ETF options had grown only 5.8% from a year before, so June marked a sharp shift in the product mix. ETF options are widely used for portfolio-level hedging and for short-dated trading on broad market indexes, so a surge of that size typically reflects a busy month for both activities. Equity options also grew strongly, up 28.6% to about 778.3 million contracts, while index options rose 44% to roughly 135.7 million.

OCC-cleared futures, which had fallen 28.4% in April, rose 39.5% in June to about 5.2 million contracts. The swing is a reminder that this relatively small line can move sharply from month to month.

First-half averages show the scale of the year’s growth. Average daily volume through June was 71.1 million contracts, up 23.5% from the same period of 2025. By product, year-to-date ADV stood at about 35.5 million contracts for equity options (+16.6%), 29.1 million for ETF options (+31.3%) and 6.3 million for index options (+32.2%). The running total had been 69.1 million through April, so May and June pulled the average higher.

Securities lending also expanded. Average daily loan value rose 42.6% to $256.4 billion, and total transactions increased 4.45% to 326,682. In April, loan value had grown while transaction counts fell; in June, both measures rose, a sign of broader participation in the lending program.

What to watch: whether ETF options can hold anything close to June’s growth rate in the July and August reports, or whether the month reflected a burst of hedging and short-dated activity that fades in late summer. The year-to-date ADV figure is the steadier gauge, and any move away from the 71 million mark will indicate whether 2026’s pace of options volume growth is still accelerating.