Reuters
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York
- Single stock options volumes have gained 77% in the last six weeks, according to a Wednesday note by Vishal Vivek and John Marshall of Goldman Sachs.
- In addition, single stock options volumes are now 91% of shares, a 14-year high, according to the note.
- Here are the top 15 stocks that have driven the record surge in options volumes, according to Goldman Sachs.
- Read more on Business Insider.
As stocks continue to gain, a pickup in trading of consumer discretionary is also pushing options volumes to a record high.
Single stock options volumes have gained 77% in the last six weeks, continuing to gain after starting the year at an all-time high, according to a Wednesday note by Goldman Sachs.
The stocks with the highest option volumes so far in February are from automaker Tesla as well as US technology giants such as Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple, according to the note. The top 15 stocks also include restaurant, entertainment, and chipmaker stocks.
In fact, single stock options volumes are now 91% of shares, meaning that options on certain stocks are being traded almost as frequently as the underlying stocks themselves, according to the note. It's the highest this percentage has reached in 14 years, wrote Vishal Vivek and John Marshall of Goldman Sachs.
The rise in activity has been dominated by call buying, according to the report. It's also pushed call-skew on single stocks, or the difference in implied volatility for option contracts on the same asset at different prices, to one-year highs, according to the report.
Call options give buyers the right to buy an asset such as Tesla stock at a specified price within a specific time period. If the stock or other underlying asset increases in price, the holder of the call option gains.
And recently, trading call options has reportedly led to massive gains for some - one Reddit trader claimed to have made $4.3 million in unrealized gains on Tesla options. Another Robinhood trader said he turned a $5,000 investment into more than $130,000 by trading Tesla options.
The high single stock options volumes might not have room to gain much further, according to the report.
"Broadly, we see limited near-term upside catalysts for stocks following the recent increase in realized volatility," wrote Vivek and Marshall.
Here are the top 15 stocks with the top notional options volumes traded this month as of February 10, ranked from lowest to highest volume, according to Goldman Sachs.
