| | | | | | | April 08, 2025 | | | |  | Jeff Bergstrom
Editor
John Lothian News | |
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| | | | Observations & Insight | | | 
Traders are turning to Weekly Energy options more than ever to precisely hedge price shifts in the crude oil and natural gas markets. Add them to your CME Direct Quick Options Grid. Watch how.
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MEMX reported strong growth in March, setting new records across its equities and options markets. Retail participation in MEMX equities reached an average daily volume of 98.8 million shares, representing a 113% year-over-year increase. In options, average daily contract volume surged to 1.9 million contracts, a 161% rise compared to the same month last year. MEMX Options also achieved record-breaking milestones, with total market share climbing to 3.7% and regular electronic market share hitting 6.5%.
MIAX Futures Exchange reported that Minneapolis Hard Red Spring Wheat (HRSW) futures and options reached their highest quarterly average daily volume (ADV) in exchange history during the first quarter of 2025. Year-to-date ADV through March 2025 was 18,002 contracts, an increase of 52.26% compared to the full-year 2024 ADV.
Over on the options side, the MIAX Exchange Group reported total multi-listed options volume of 173.6 million contracts in March 2025, up 26.8% year-over-year, bringing year-to-date volume to a record 514.9 million contracts. March market share was 15.6%, down 2.2% YoY. MIAX Sapphire hit a record monthly volume of 23.4 million contracts with a 2.1% market share, while MIAX Options posted a record 76.4 million contracts, up 38.6% YoY, reaching a 6.8% market share. MIAX Pearl Options recorded a monthly volume of 31.4 million contracts in March.
Separately, Bloomberg made changes to the Bloomberg US Large Cap Equity Index (B500) effective prior to the open of trading on March 13, 2025, as part of its semi-annual reconstitution. These changes will impact the upcoming MIAX Bloomberg B500 Index futures and options, which are designed to provide exposure to the 500 largest publicly traded U.S. corporations.
| | | | | | Lead Stories | | | Gutsy Traders Make $1.5 Billion Triple-Leveraged Bet on Nasdaq 100
Vildana Hajric - Bloomberg
As US equities mount a rebound, some investors look set for a win after making a bold bet on tech stocks that saw record cash shoveled into a triple-levered fund tracking the Nasdaq 100.
Undaunted by the wild volatility of recent days, traders sank $1.5 billion into the ProShares UltraPro QQQ fund (ticker TQQQ) in the most recent session for which data is available, the largest inflow in its 15-year history. TQQQ uses options to deliver three times the daily performance of the Nasdaq 100.
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Traders Bet 'Insane' Currency Volatility Is Here to Stay
Vassilis Karamanis - Bloomberg
Currency traders are positioning for turbulence in currency markets to get even worse as an escalating trade war shakes up the global economic order. The dollar and its peers have been whipsawed by some of the sharpest price swings since the 2008 financial crisis, as conflicting tariff messages from US President Donald Trump keep markets on edge. Options volumes surged to a record last week and uncertainty around the trade war has now pushed expectations for volatility in the next month to a two-year high. "Volatility in FX has been completely insane," Brent Donnelly, president of Spectra FX Solutions LLC., wrote in a note. "We saw one of our biggest weeks ever on the trading side as volumes are gigantic and everyone is doing all kinds of stuff."
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Oil Traders Hedge Against Recession With Record Options Bets
Alex Longley and Mia Gindis - Bloomberg
Investors are dialing up wagers on prices slumping below $60 in a hedge against a wider economic downturn.
The oil options market was shaken out of a months-long stupor last week after OPEC+ ramped up output in the middle of a potential global economic downturn, pushing crude prices to a four-year low.
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Bitcoin Turns Less Volatile Than Stocks as Tariffs Wreak Havoc
David Pan - Bloomberg
President Donald Trump's onslaught of tariffs on US trading partners has triggered the stock market to swing more wildly than the oldest cryptocurrency, a rare reversal of historical volatility trends.
The divergence is a departure from the long-time correlation between Bitcoin and stocks, in which the digital asset typically experiences larger price swings. Unlike many of the companies whose shares make up major US equity indexes, digital token aren't impacted materially by the tariffs.
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Wall Street's Crypto Appetite Tested Again With New Altcoin ETF
Isabelle Lee - Bloomberg
Alternative asset manager Teucrium Investment Advisors LLC is launching a leveraged exchange-traded fund linked to cryptocurrency XRP, the asset at the center of a recently ended probe of Ripple Labs Inc. by US regulators. The Teucrium 2x Long Daily XRP ETF, which aims to use swaps to offer twice the daily return of the XRP token, starts trading on Tuesday, according to the company's website. The product will be the first ETF of its kind in the US to offer exposure to the fourth-largest cryptocurrency, with a market value of around $111 billion. The ETF will trade under the ticker XXRP and have a 1.85% expense ratio.
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Wall Street traders poised to bail out bankers in first-quarter results; Market volatility expected to drive bumper quarter in trading while depressing M&A and IPO revenues
Joshua Franklin - Financial Times
Wall Street traders are expected to report their best quarter in more than a decade after market ructions during the Trump administration's early months helped salvage an underwhelming performance by investment bankers. In first-quarter earnings later this month, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citigroup are collectively expected to report about $34.5bn in revenues from equities and fixed income trading. That is up 10 per cent from a year earlier and the highest since at least the start of 2014, according to data from Bloomberg and Visible Alpha.
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A market rout made in the White House; Those with the president's ear must urge him to change course on tariffs
The editorial board - Financial Times
On Monday morning traders woke up to signals of carnage across their screens. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index closed down over 13 per cent, marking its worst single-day fall since 1997. In Europe, the UK's FTSE fell to a one-year low and at one point Germany's Dax was down 10 per cent. Then, as US markets opened, the S&P 500 plunged 4 per cent, having already shed $5.4tn in market value since US President Donald Trump unveiled what he called his "liberation day" package of tariffs to the world on April 2.
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US banks held record $78bn in equity collateral before market crash; Stocks made up 11% of dealers' OTC derivatives collateral at end-2024 - highest ever reported
Lorenzo Migliorato - Risk.net
At the end of last year, more than one in every 10 dollars of collateral posted to US dealers on over-the-counter derivatives was in the form of equities - a record share, just three months before markets tanked in the wake of sweeping tariffs announced by the Trump administration. Derivatives counterparties to the eight US banks that disclosed this type of collateral - seven systemic banks and Truist - had posted $78.3 billion in equities as of December 31, the latest date with available data
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| | | | | | Exchanges | | | Cboe to launch FTSE Bitcoin Index Futures; The launch marks the first product to be integrated under the network's latest collaboration with FTSE Russell.
Natasha Cocksedge - The Trade
Cboe Global Markets has unveiled plans for its new Cboe FTSE Bitcoin Index Futures (XBTF), with trading scheduled on the Cboe Futures Exchange for 28 April. Cboe said the product aligned with its vision to drive expansion in the digital assets markets. The launch marks a step forward in the exchange operator's collaboration with FTSE Russell. "This launch comes at a pivotal time as demand forâEUR¯cryptoâEUR¯exposure continues to grow and market participants are increasingly seeking more capital-efficient and versatile ways to gain and manage that exposure," said global head of derivatives at Cboe, Catherine Clay.
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Investors Report Glitches at Fidelity, Robinhood and Other Brokers
Alexander Osipovich - The Wall Street Journal
Some investors looking to survey the damage to their stock portfolios this morning encountered frustrating technical glitches at brokerages including Fidelity Investments and Robinhood Markets. Downdetector, a crowdsourced website where users report outages to popular websites, showed a spike in reports at Fidelity, Robinhood and Interactive Brokers around 9:30 a.m. ET, when U.S. stock markets opened with a sharp drop caused by fallout from President Donald Trump's tariff announcement last week. On Reddit, some users reported getting error messages when they logged in to Fidelity and tried to look at account positions. Several users on a Reddit forum devoted to Interactive Brokers complained that they were unable to log in at all, or that the platform was being slow. On X, some users tweeted about problems viewing options prices at Robinhood.
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Exchanges could provide haven in wild markets
Financial Times
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Volatility spikes, and MEMX Options hits new volume and market-share high
MEMX
Market volatility increased in March due to macro concerns around a slowing economy and rising inflation. The VIX averaged 21.9 in March, its highest level over the past year. Industry equity volume increased to 16 billion average daily shares in March, up over 33% year-over-year.
/jlne.ws/4coXJIA
Miami International Holdings Reports Trading Results for March 2025; Options Volume Jumps 26.8% with MIAX Futures Volume Up 80.4%
MIAX
Miami International Holdings, Inc. (MIH), a technology-driven leader in building and operating regulated financial markets across multiple asset classes, today reported March 2025 trading results for its U.S. exchange subsidiaries-MIAX, MIAX Pearl, MIAX Emerald and MIAX Sapphire (collectively, the MIAX Exchange Group), and MIAX Futures.
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NYSE Exchanges to Close In Observance of Good Friday
NYSE
In observance of Good Friday, the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE American Equities, NYSE Arca Equities, NYSE Texas, NYSE National, NYSE American Options, NYSE Arca Options, and NYSE Bonds markets will be closed on Friday, April 18, 2025.
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Abaxx Provides Q1 2025 Corporate Update
Abaxx
Abaxx Technologies Inc. (CBOE:ABXX)(OTCQX:ABXXF) ("Abaxx" or the "Company"), a financial software and market infrastructure company, majority shareholder of Abaxx Singapore Pte Ltd., the owner of Abaxx Commodity Exchange and Clearinghouse (individually, "Abaxx Exchange" and "Abaxx Clearing"), and producer of the SmarterMarketsâ⢠Podcast, provides an update on operational milestones and the continued execution of the Company's business strategy in the first quarter of 2025.
/jlne.ws/4i4TxPq
| | | | | | Strategy | | | Stock Futures Surge Higher as Markets Recover. Brace for Volatility as Tariff Uncertainty Remains.
Adam Clark - Barron's
Strap yourself in for another wild ride. U.S. stock futures were pointing to gains early Tuesday but with the potential for sharp moves on more tariff news.
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were up 1,048 points, or 2.7%. S&P 500 futures were climbing 2.4% and Nasdaq 100 futures were gaining 2.3%.
/jlne.ws/42wmxKi
Market stress signals are flashing bright
Reuters
(This April 7 story has been corrected to show that the order of magnitude is in basis points, not percentage points, in paragraph 7)
As a rout in global equity markets deepened on Monday amid tariff turmoil, the signs of stress across financial markets have started to flash brightly.
"It's quite clear that the market is in a panic," said Van Luu, global head of FX and fixed income strategy, Russell Investments.
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