Five Reasons to Trade Options on S&P 500 Futures

The delta of options on futures remains constant through expiry. In-the-money options deliver into physical futures positions while out-of-the-money contracts expire “worthless.” In-the-money cash index options will never physically settle, forcing investors to replace the expiring delta with new index positions which creates slippage risk on the execution.

Futures options expire to a 30-sec VWAP of the underlying future – a “clean” price completely contained within the futures complex.¹

Weekly and End-of-Month options are exercised automatically providing greater certainty for investors by removing the risk of abandonment or contrarian exercise.

CME options on S&P 500 futures have a five-year compound annual growth rate of  28%  and maintain over 29 percent market share versus CBOE cash options. In Q3 2016, E-mini S&P 500 options ADV was  560,433 contracts and S&P 500 options ADV was  45,536 contracts.

Densely-packed strikes and more than 100  annual expiries – with the recent listing of Wednesday Weekly Options – ensure all the granularity and coverage investors need to express the view they want. Each contract trades in a single order book with no multi-exchange fragmentation.

Clients can achieve considerable margin savings by netting options on futures with offsetting futures hedges. Portfolio margining results in a single performance bond requirement and daily variation margin adjustment. Capital efficiencies are furthered by the physical settlement into the underlying future that requires substantially less margin/capital than trading the cash securities basket at expiration.

Clients can capitalize on actionable liquidity whenever news happens with over 52,000 contracts per day trading outside of US trading hours.

Trade options on the E-mini contract electronically around the clock or use the Standard options hybrid model of overnight electronic trading and open-outcry floor trading during U.S. market hours.

¹ The only exceptions are quarterly options, which expire jointly with the futures at the cash index SOQ.

Data through September 30, 2016.