The NYSE Arca Options Trading Floor partially re-opened on May 4, 2020, after its temporary closure on March 23, 2020. The Trading Floor is crucial for executing complex transactions, which benefit from the human judgment that the Floor provides. As anticipated, following the re-opening, there has been a resurgence in volume associated with these types of transactions, as well as the return of certain market participants that had been inactive while the Floor was closed. Upon the return of the Trading Floor presence, NYSE Arca market share has returned to its levels prior to the re-opening.

Product Types

Complex multi-leg options trades are easier to execute with the Trading Floor.

• Year-to-date (through May 1), multi-leg options trades accounted for 81.2% of Arca Floor trade volume, while single-leg trades accounted for 18.8%.
• Following the Floor re-opening, multi-leg options trades accounted for 88.2% of Arca Floor trading volume, and single-leg accounted for 11.8%. Multi-leg trades generally have higher volumes, but we also saw a high frequency of these trades with multi-leg at 77% and single-leg at 23% of Floor trades on Arca.
• In the industry, Floor Trade share recovered nearly half of its share prior to the temporary closures.

Industry Trade Type Mix

Participants

• NYSE Arca experienced a 90% drop in Firm volume during the Floor closure, which aligns with the pullback in Firm volume seen across the entire industry during this time.
• After the re-opening, Firm volume, across all product types, is up 26% vs. Jan - Feb of 2020. Both January and February were record months for industry ADV, so this growth is meaningful.
• The steep drop in volume during the closure, and subsequent recovery upon re-opening, demonstrates the importance of the Trading Floor as a unique tool for institutional-sized liquidity in the market.

Arca Average Daily Firm Volume