US option contract volume by Eastern-time half hour
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 2026-10-04, from What Time Do Options Start Trading?.
| et_time | contracts_millions | share_pct |
|---|---|---|
| 07:00 | 0 | 0 |
| 07:30 | 0 | 0 |
| 08:00 | 0 | 0 |
| 08:30 | 0 | 0 |
| 09:00 | 0 | 0 |
| 09:30 | 67.5 | 12.75 |
| 10:00 | 58.8 | 11.11 |
| 10:30 | 50.38 | 9.52 |
| 11:00 | 42.82 | 8.09 |
| 11:30 | 37.46 | 7.08 |
| 12:00 | 36.52 | 6.9 |
| 12:30 | 34.4 | 6.5 |
| 13:00 | 31.96 | 6.04 |
| 13:30 | 30.21 | 5.71 |
| 14:00 | 29.36 | 5.55 |
| 14:30 | 27.85 | 5.26 |
| 15:00 | 31.62 | 5.97 |
| 15:30 | 45.07 | 8.51 |
| 16:00 | 5.42 | 1.02 |
| 16:30 | 0.07 | 0.01 |
| 17:00 | 0 | 0 |
- Rows × columns
- 21 × 3
- Computed
- Completeness
- No missing values
- Source
- US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
- Licence
- Strasmore terms · free, no signup
What each column holds
| Column | Type | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
et_time |
text | 21 distinct values (07:00, 07:30, 08:00…) | |
contracts_millions |
number | 0 to 67.5 | count |
share_pct |
number | 0 to 12.75 | 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.
WITH
tape AS
(
SELECT
intDiv(
toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) * 60
+ toMinute(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')), 30) * 30 AS bucket_minute,
sum(volume) AS contracts
FROM global_markets.options_minute_aggs
WHERE window_start >= today() - 12
AND window_start < today() - 2
GROUP BY bucket_minute
),
shares AS
(
SELECT
bucket_minute,
contracts,
round(100 * contracts / sum(contracts) OVER (), 2) AS share_pct
FROM tape
)
SELECT
formatDateTime(toDateTime('2026-01-01 00:00:00') + grid.bucket_minute * 60, '%H:%i') AS et_time,
round(ifNull(s.contracts, 0) / 1000000, 2) AS contracts_millions,
ifNull(s.share_pct, 0) AS share_pct
FROM
(
SELECT 420 + 30 * arrayJoin(range(21)) AS bucket_minute
) AS grid
LEFT JOIN shares AS s ON s.bucket_minute = grid.bucket_minute
ORDER BY grid.bucket_minute
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