Another Equity Volume Record; New Zero-Day Options Drive Growth
Mar 6, 2026
Another Equity Volume Record; New Zero-Day Options Drive Growth
Highlights & Recent Developments
- Industry equity activity remained strong, up 54% year-over-year to $1.1 trillion average daily notional traded, a new record
- MEMX Equities average daily notional traded grew 86% year-over-year to $19.7 billion
- MEMX announced a launch date of September 14, 2026 for MX2 Options
- MEMX Options activity was up 32% year-over-year to 2.5 million average daily contracts
- Monday and Wednesday option expirations became available in nine symbols and contributed to zero-day options volume growth
Equities Exchange Highlights
Industry equity average daily notional traded hit new records of $1.0 trillion in January and $1.1 trillion in February. MEMX notional traded increased to $19.7 billion, up 86% year-over-year.
MEMX retail average daily volume grew 20% year-over-year to 160 million shares. Sub-$1 activity accounted for 26.5% of retail activity.
Investors benefited from high MEMX fill rates for non-marketable limit orders. MEMX retail fill rates ranged from 92% to 96% in smaller and mid-sized orders placed near the NBBO.
Options Exchange Highlights
MX2 Options announced a September 14, 2026 launch date and additional milestone dates.
Options activity also remained strong in February. Industry average daily volume was up 26% year-over-year to 66.8 million contracts. MEMX Options volume was up 32% year-over-year.
The rise in shorter-dated contracts has driven significant industry growth and reshaped the liquidity distribution across the options market. There are daily expirations for the most active option symbols (SPY and QQQ) where zero-day-to-expirations (0DTE) options typically account for over 50% of options volume.
In February, new Monday and Wednesday option expirations became available in nine symbols (TSLA, NVDA, AAPL, AMZN, MSFT, META, GOOGL, IBIT, AVGO). Previously, these symbols had only weekly options expiring on Fridays. Now, these symbols have 0DTE options on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Figure 6 shows options activity by symbol on Monday, February 23rd. Zero-day volume was significant, accounting for over 40% of the day’s volume in five of the nine symbols (TSLA, NVDA, AAPL, GOOGL, META).
These new 0DTE options contributed to growth in February. In the nine symbols, zero-day option volume grew 95% month-over-month, which contributed to total growth of 29% month-over-month in this group of symbols. By contrast, option volume fell 4% month-over-month in the remaining symbols.
