Cboe Global Markets, Inc. today announced it plans to launch Tuesday and Thursday-expiring Russell 2000® Index weekly (RUTW) options and Mini-Russell 2000® Index weekly (MRUT) options, beginning Monday, January 8, 2024.
With these new listings, Cboe expands its cash-settled Russell 2000 Index weekly options suite to offer investors with expirations every trading day of the week.
The Russell 2000 Index is one of the world’s premier benchmarks for measuring the performance of U.S. small-cap equities. The addition of Tuesday and Thursday-expiries will provide daily expirations for RUTW and MRUT options, enabling investors to potentially manage their small-cap U.S. equity exposures and execute targeted buying, selling or spreading strategies around market events with greater precision, flexibility and control.
“Investors are becoming increasingly sophisticated and are using short-dated index options for a variety of trading strategies,” said Catherine Clay, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Derivatives at Cboe. “As evidenced by the sustained volume growth over the past couple of years, short-dated index options have become an indispensable tool for hedging, risk management, and income generation among a diverse base of market participants. As trading strategies become more tactical and average time to expiry trend shorter, our clients are seeking even more granular expiries. We’re excited to continue collaborating with FTSE Russell to offer daily expiries for the Russell 2000 Index options suite and expand our customers’ abilities to trade short-dated strategies across additional new products.”
“FTSE Russell and Cboe share a deep commitment to delivering innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of the marketplace,” said Shawn Creighton, Director of Index Derivatives Solutions at FTSE Russell. “We are excited to continue building on our successful relationship and leverage FTSE Russell’s position as a leading global index provider and Cboe’s deep expertise in derivatives trading to facilitate more tradeable products and investment opportunities tied to the Russell 2000 Index – the world’s most comprehensive and precise measure of the small-cap segment of the U.S. equities market.”
RUTW and MRUT options are European-style options (no early exercise) and cash-settled (no delivery or assignment of shares) at expiration with P.M. settlement. MRUT options are structured like standard RUTW options and similarly track the underlying Russell 2000 Index but feature a smaller contract that is 1/10th the size. MRUT offers a potentially more cost-effective way to execute small-cap equity trading strategies.
RUTW and MRUT options are exclusively listed on Cboe’s options exchanges. A total of 15.2 million RUT options contracts were traded in 20231, with an average daily volume (ADV) of 63,000 contracts, representing approximately $11 billion in average daily notional value, up 39 percent from the prior year. The new Tuesday and Thursday-expiries complement the existing suite of Weeklys, end-of-month and quarterly RUTW and MRUT options.
