Did a group of traders in rapidly expiring options recently drag the S&P 500 lower in the final hour of trading? Or has the influence of this booming corner of the options world been exaggerated?
Analysts at Goldman Sachs Group GS, -1.02%, Nomura and other banks homed in on price action in stocks on Aug. 15, when the S&P 500 shed roughly 0.4% in a 20-minute period that also saw a flurry of trading in 0DTEs. The S&P 500 closed 1.2.% lower for the session, its biggest daily percentage drop in about two weeks, according to FactSet data.
But a team of analysts at BofA has a different interpretation of what happened. To be sure, they acknowledged that 0DTE trading volume has grown dramatically in August to record highs. According to the team, eight of the 10 highest notional-volume days for S&P 500-linked 0DTEs occurred in the past 30 days.
Zero-day options in their current form are fairly new. But trading in these options has boomed since last year when the CME Group and Cboe Global Markets, two major U.S. derivatives exchanges, introduced weekly options on certain indexes and ETFs with expirations every day of the trading week. Data cited by several Wall Street strategists showed roughly 100,000 0DTE put options with a strike at 4,440 changed hands after 3 p.m. Eastern. However, BofA’s analysis concluded that buy-side traders were net sellers of these contracts, not net buyers, as other analysts have concluded.