OBSERVATIONS

Henry Schwartz, vice president of market intelligence at Cboe Global Markets, reported on LinkedIn that the options market set several all-time records, including 110 million contracts traded market-wide, 8.3 million S&P 500 Index (SPX) options contracts, and 579,000 Mini-SPX (XSP) options contracts. Zero-days-to-expiration (0DTE) options accounted for 58.6% of SPX volume. The market also recorded 17.04 million individual executions, up 2 million from the previous record, while total options volume across Cboe exchanges surpassed 20 million contracts.

Miami International Holdings reported record year-to-date trading activity across its four U.S. options exchanges through October 2026, with average daily volume reaching 11 million contracts, up 16.6% from the same period in 2025. The MIAX Exchange Group, comprising MIAX, MIAX Pearl, MIAX Emerald and MIAX Sapphire, also achieved a record year-to-date market share of 17.1%, compared with 17.0% a year earlier. The results, announced Nov. 5, highlight continued growth in options trading activity across MIAX’s exchange platforms and a modest increase in its share of the competitive U.S. options market. ~JJL

LEAD

Options Volumes Soar to Record Levels on Post-Election Sell Off
Bernard Goyder – Bloomberg
The US options markets had its busiest day ever on Thursday as stocks slumped, with average daily volumes rising 53% above the average level in October, according to clearing data. Average daily volumes hit more than 112 million contracts on Nov. 5, just more than half of which were puts. Put options are bearish when bought.
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Equity Volatility Jumps Most Since April 2025 Tariff Turmoil
David Marino and Bernard Goyder – Bloomberg
The cost to hedge against the biggest S&P 500 plunge in more than a year soared on Thursday as traders sought cover from further wild swings. The Cboe Volatility Index, or VIX, measuring expected volatility in the US benchmark and a key gauge of market stress, rose the most since April 2025 as the S&P 500 dropped 4.4% and the Nasdaq 100 slid more than 6%. The cost of VIX options rose even more, jumping faster than at any time since the Volmageddon episode in 2018.
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The VIX volatility index just spiked 70%. Here’s what history suggests comes next.
Brian Sozzi – Yahoo Finance
If you are looking for something positive after Thursday’s shocking stock beatdown, you have come to the right place ahead of the weekend. History suggests stocks tend to do well after the extreme volatility we saw two days removed from the Election Day blue wave.
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Market Swims in a Sea of Red
JJ Kinahan – Cboe
Traders slammed stocks tied to artificial intelligence (AI) in a broad-based selloff that more than wiped out Wednesday’s post-election euphoria. The Nasdaq Composite was drenched in red throughout the session, falling below its 200-day moving average (DMA) and settling in correction territory after a 5.5% drop. The S&P 500 Index was off 4.4%, and the Dow was down 3.4%.
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Options Action: Volatility vs. the market
Oliver Renick – CNBC (Video)
CNBC’s Oliver Renick joins ‘Squawk on the Street’ with the latest Options Action.
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Taiwan Steps In to Calm Investor Nerves After Bruising AI Rout
Betty Hou – Bloomberg
Taiwan stepped in to try to calm investor nerves after a deepening selloff in artificial intelligence shares drove the island’s benchmark to its worst week in a quarter century. In separate announcements after the close of trading Friday, the market regulator said it will impose curbs on short selling from Nov. 9, and the Finance Ministry said it’s prepared to deploy its NT500billion(15 billion) stock stabilization fund in the wake of the slump.
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Hedge Funds Dump AI Debt in ‘Massive’ Selloff, RBC’s Skiba Says
Josie Reich and Scarlet Fu – Bloomberg
Hedge funds have been heavy sellers over the last few weeks of debt related to the artificial intelligence buildout, according to Andrzej Skiba, head of BlueBay US fixed income at RBC Global Asset Management. “We have seen a massive hedge fund capitulation within the space,” Skiba said on Bloomberg Television Thursday. “We have seen positions being collapsed, lots of selling actually going through the market.”
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Kalshi and Polymarket claim 98% accuracy in calling midterm races
Cris Tolomia – Quartz
Kalshi said the candidates its traders favored won 98% of resolved races in Tuesday’s midterm elections. The company announced the figure on Wednesday. The tally covers 479 of 487 races resolved as of 6 a.m. ET on Nov. 4, Kalshi said. Favorites won 356 of 360 House races, 32 of 33 Senate races and 33 of 34 governor races.
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Exchanges

Kalshi Opens Single-Stock Perpetual Futures Trading
The Defiant
Kalshi has opened perpetual futures trading on individual stocks, with AAPL, AMZN and AMD contracts active on Nov. 5, extending its regulated derivatives business beyond broad stock-index exposure. The contracts let approved U.S.-based customers take leveraged long or short positions without owning shares or rolling an expiring future. Kalshi’s product guide says each trading contract represents 0.02 shares, with funding exchanged between long and short holders once a day at 4 p.m. ET.
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Market Metrics That Matter: Cboe FX October Volume Highlights
Cboe
In October 2026, Cboe FX Spot Average Daily Volume (ADV) reached $56.1billion, an 8.4% increase from October 2025’s ADV of $51.8 billion. Cboe SEF ADV1 topped $4.3 billion, representing a 27.5% increase from $3.4 billion in October 2025. On October 15, the LD4 venue recorded $1.4 billion in notional traded, a new single-day high-water mark.
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October 2026 figures at Eurex
Eurex
Eurex – one of the leading European derivatives exchanges and – with Eurex Clearing – one of the leading central counterparties globally – reported a 27 percent year-on-year increase in derivatives trading volume in October 2026, reaching a total of 200 million contracts. Equity derivatives trading volume rose by 4 percent, from 24.2 million contracts in October 2025 to 25.1 million contracts in October 2026. Index derivatives recorded stronger growth, increasing by 15 percent from 53.0 million to 60.7 million contracts. Interest rate derivatives were the strongest growth driver, with trading volume surging by 42 percent to 114.2 million contracts, compared with 80.4 million contracts in the same month of the previous year.
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REGULATION

Elizabeth Warren Could Reportedly Gain Senate Banking Power — and Put Crypto, Prediction Markets Under the Microscope
Aniket Verma – Benzinga
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is reportedly expected to chair the Senate Banking Committee starting in 2027, a role that would give her broad authority to investigate prediction markets and cryptocurrency firms Warren to Investigate Trump? Warren could use the committee’s subpoena powers to investigate alleged insider trading involving prediction markets and examine consumer-protection practices at cryptocurrency companies, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
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Illinois regulators say prediction markets are illegal gambling, but bettors love them
Casey Toner and Hannah Meisel – Springfield Business Journal
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, at a small, round table in a spacious apartment in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, 19-year-old Oliver Wilson sits engrossed in front of two laptop screens, neither of which have anything to do with his introductory-level molecular engineering final exam in a few hours. The University of Chicago freshman is on Polymarket, watching in real-time as users bet whether interest rates will rise in the coming weeks. The cryptocurrency-based platform allows users to wager — through buying and selling contracts — on the outcomes of future events.
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CFTC Issues Impartial Access Requirements Interpretation
CFTC
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today issued an interpretation (“Interpretation”) of the requirement that designated contract markets (“DCMs”) provide competitive, open, fair, and impartial access to their members and persons with trading privileges under Commission Regulation 38.151(b) (“Impartial Access Requirements”). “Derivatives markets must operate on a uniform basis at a national scale in order to achieve the purposes set out in the Commodity Exchange Act,” said Chairman Michael S. Selig. “Geographic access restrictions are inconsistent with those purposes and the Act’s impartial access requirements.”
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CFTC Staff Addresses Use of Trust Companies for Daily Settlements
CFTC
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Division of Clearing and Risk today issued a no-action letter addressing whether derivatives clearing organizations may use trust companies to conduct daily settlements with clearing members.
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Strategy

The World’s Debt Is at Record Levels. 6 Ways to Protect Your Portfolio.
Reshma Kapadia – Barron’s
The borrowing binge makes global markets even riskier and complicates the ability of central banks to step in to help.
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Buy the dip or wait it out? Young investors react as retail stock selling hits one of its highest levels since COVID crash.
Joseph Adinolfi – MarketWatch
As stocks plunged Thursday, some younger investors saw an opportunity to buy. Others weren’t so sure the worst was over. For investors who got their start during the pandemic, sharp selloffs can resurface memories of the spectacular rebound that followed the COVID-era crash. But Thursday’s rout was testing just how eager they were to buy the dip.
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MISCELLANEOUS

FIA Expo 2026: Day One Recap; What a momentous week! What a tremendous conference!
Chuck Mackie via Linkedin.com
Excuse me while I take a minute to catch my breath…..in a week where the U.S. election produced a momentous swing from red to blue and cracks widened in the AI economy, FIA, Inc.’s FIA Expo delivered a program that was beyond compare to any others in my decades-long career. With everything from perpetual futures, prediction markets, AI, compute futures, 24/7 trading, rogue regulation, and a significant swan song from an exchange leader, FIA Expo was, in one simple word, a lot! I’m still digesting it all. While I continue to try and figure it all out, here is a recap of the first part of day one at the conference.
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***** What would an FIA EXPO be without a re-Chuck of the event?~JJL