STRASMORE/EXPLORE 3,256 QUERIES

Witching Thursday vs. the two ordinary Fridays before it: US option contracts traded, and the same-day-expiring share

Answered against 22 years of US equities and 12 years of US options data and published with the query that produced it. This result is stored as of 2026-09-28, from What Is Triple Witching? Volume & Volatility.

as of series 3×4read in context →
Witching Thursday vs. the two ordinary Fridays before it: US option contracts traded, and the same-day-expiring share — 3 rows by 4 columns, computed from US exchange, SIP and OPRA data.
session_dateall_contracts_mmexpiring_same_day_mmpct_expiring_same_day
2026-06-05103.145.343.9
2026-06-1276.334.144.7
2026-06-1879.238.648.7
Rows × columns
3 × 4
Period covered
to
Computed
Completeness
No missing values
Source
US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
Licence
Strasmore terms · free, no signup
Formats
JSON · CSV · the SQL below

What each column holds

Column definitions for Witching Thursday vs. the two ordinary Fridays before it: US option contracts traded, and the same-day-expiring share, derived from the stored result.
ColumnTypeRangeNotes
session_date date 2026-06-05 to 2026-06-18
all_contracts_mm number 76.3 to 103.1 count
expiring_same_day_mm number 34.1 to 45.3
pct_expiring_same_day number 43.9 to 48.7 percent

Computed from Strasmore's warehouse of US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data. Equity prices are delayed; options greeks and implied volatility are end-of-day. This result is stored, not recomputed on load — it is exactly the numbers that were returned on , and the query below is what returned them.

Run it yourself

This is the exact query behind the result above. Change a ticker, a date or a column and run it against the warehouse — no account, no key. The no-signup tier is smaller than the one this page was computed on; a query that reaches past it comes back saying which plan runs it.

SELECT toString(d) AS session_date,
       round(sum(vol) / 1e6, 1) AS all_contracts_mm,
       round(sumIf(vol, expiry = d) / 1e6, 1) AS expiring_same_day_mm,
       round(sumIf(vol, expiry = d) / sum(vol) * 100, 1) AS pct_expiring_same_day
FROM (
    SELECT toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) AS d,
           toDateOrNull(concat('20', substring(ticker, length(ticker) - 14, 6))) AS expiry,
           toFloat64(volume) AS vol
    FROM global_markets.options_minute_aggs
    WHERE (window_start >= '2026-06-05 04:00:00' AND window_start < '2026-06-06 04:00:00')
       OR (window_start >= '2026-06-12 04:00:00' AND window_start < '2026-06-13 04:00:00')
       OR (window_start >= '2026-06-18 04:00:00' AND window_start < '2026-06-19 04:00:00')
)
WHERE expiry IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY d
ORDER BY d
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More from this analysisWhat Is Triple Witching? Volume & Volatility
SPY on witching sessions vs. the same month's other sessions: intraday range and net move (% of the open) series 8×5 → Every quarterly witching session since September 2024: market-wide share volume vs. the month's other sessions series 8×5 → SPY's expiring June 18, 2026 series: contracts traded by strike, and each strike's distance from the closing price ranking 12×4 → Contract volume by expiration date: all US options traded June 1-18, 2026, top eight expiries ranking 8×2 → Closing auction prints of ten large S&P 500 members: dollar volume on witching day vs. a typical June 2026 session scalar 1×5 → SPY options volume by June 2026 expiration date: a new expiry every session series 21×2 → See all 3,256 queries →