Retail Volume Growth; Record MEMX Options Volume
Oct 7, 2025
Retail Volume Growth; Record MEMX Options Volume
Highlights & Recent Developments
- Read MEMX’s take on the SEC’s September roundtable on trade-through prohibitions
- Consolidated equity volume grew over 50% year-over-year in September
- MEMX retail volume grew 166% year-to-date through September
- In November, the round-lot size will decrease to 40 shares or less in around 261 stocks
- MEMX Options hit a new monthly volume record of 2.15 million average daily contracts, up 45% year-over-year
- MX2 Options received SEC approval for our pro-rata/customer priority exchange, which is expected to launch in Q2 2026
Equities Exchange Highlights
In September, consolidated equity volume grew significantly year-over-year, including notional traded up 53% and share volume up 55%.
MEMX retail volume has grown 166% year-to-date through September. Retail average daily volume was 159 million shares over the past six months. Retail investors benefit from high fill rates on our platform.
In November 2025, the round lot size will decrease to 40, 10, or 1 share for NMS stocks priced greater than $250 per share. Then in May 2026, additional odd-lot quotation information will be disseminated on the consolidated SIP data feeds. Figure 3 shows there are 261 symbols with a stock price over $250, which account for a small portion (3.6%) of share volume but represent around a third (33.1%) of notional volume. The majority of trades in these high-priced stocks are odd lots, which account for 83.6% of total trades
Options Exchange Highlights
MEMX Options hit a new monthly volume record of 2.15 million average daily contracts, up 45% year-over-year. Industry options volume rose to 58.3 million contracts per day in September, up 37% year-over-year.
1 Included options equity and ETF volume, excludes index options
MX2 Options received SEC approval and our new exchange is expected to launch in Q2 2026. While MEMX Options uses a price time-model, MX2 will use a customer priority, pro-rata allocation model and include a unique active risk control feature that has been available on MEMX Options. MX2 will allow MEMX to expand into the significant pro-rata market and attract new users whose business is more geared towards this model.
The MEMX Options price-time model is highly suited for continuous single-leg trading (i.e. Regular Electronic), which accounted for 53% of industry volume in September. Our price/time model helps deliver the narrowest spreads to the marketplace. For example, in SPY, MEMX Options market share was 6.3% and ranked 1st in quote performance among 18 exchanges on the last day in September
1 Regular electronic market share includes continuous trading in single-leg equity and ETF options (excludes auctions, floor, and complex trades)
2 Quote performance is calculated based on the percent of time an exchange was quoting at the best bid or ask when an options regular electronic trade occurred. The higher the percentage, the greater an exchange’s quote performance.
3 Excludes SPY and QQQ