Today, Friday, March 21, over $4.7 trillion worth of options are expiring in the stock market, according to trading data from Goldman Sachs. That number is based on notional value, which includes all the assets tied to the contracts.
This expiration includes $2.8 trillion in S&P 500 options and $645 billion in single stock options, making it the largest options expiration since December 20, 2024, when the total was $6.6 trillion.
Source: Goldman Sachs
The S&P 500 options alone carry a spot price of 5675. These expiring contracts account for 8.2% of the entire Russell 3000 market cap, which is slightly below the 9.3% that expired in December. But this still makes it the second-largest notional expiration in less than a year. The amount of money tied to these contracts is large enough to move index prices within hours. Traders have been watching it all week.
Volatility jumps while VIX climbs again
The expiration is happening while volatility is rising across the board. The Volatility Index (VIX) started climbing again this week, just like it did ahead of the December 20 options expiration. That earlier jump happened while the Santa Claus rally started fading, and stocks began to dip near the end of 2024.
Now, the pattern is repeating. The VIX is already up, and it’s not coming back down yet. This time, though, the position structure is different. According to data shared by SpotGamma, 68% of the S&P 500 options expiring today are puts, while single stock options show 54% puts. That puts more downside exposure into today’s session.
In December, the setup leaned the other way. The call-to-put ratio before that expiration was 10-to-1, yet the S&P 500 still closed up 1.1% by the end of that session. That kind of move today would catch a lot of people off guard. But traders aren’t betting on that repeat, at least not based on today’s position data.
Triple witching and heavy volume hit at the same time
This is also a triple witching day, meaning stock options, stock index futures, and stock index options are all expiring at once. Traders also call it quadruple witching if single-stock futures are added to the mix. These kinds of sessions have usually led to negative returns when you look back over the past ten years.
The volume of options contracts is exploding again too. Over the last five trading days, the average options contract volume has climbed to around 70 million. That’s double what it used to be. Before 2020, this number never even hit 35 million.
A lot of this surge is coming from 0DTE options, which are contracts that expire the same day they’re bought. These now make up 55% of all option volume, based on data shared by Goldman Sachs. That means traders are doing same-day bets more than ever before, and with this many expiring contracts at once, it adds even more instability to the session.
Goldman also estimated that today’s expiration carries a notional exposure of more than $4.7 trillion. That’s nearly a fifth of the total daily market volume on a high-trade day.
Indexes fall as tariff fears and tech weakness pile on
The S&P 500 dropped 0.8% today. That puts the index on track to record its fifth straight weekly loss, something that hasn’t happened in more than two years. The Nasdaq Composite pulled back 0.7%, and the Dow Jones fell 264 points, or 0.6%.
This drop also brought the S&P 500 back into negative territory for the week, down 0.4% since Monday. At one point, the index dropped far enough to touch correction territory, which is defined as a 10% fall from its recent high. Right now, it’s sitting more than 8% off that record, still within reach of a deeper correction if selling keeps going.
There was a slight rally earlier in the week when the Federal Reserve confirmed it still expects two interest rate cuts in 2025. But the bounce didn’t last. Markets dropped again on Thursday and Friday, pulling the major indexes down with them.
Donald Trump’s upcoming tariff deadline on April 2 is also weighing heavily. Many companies have been warning about the economic impact of unclear trade policy. Michael Green, the chief strategist at Simplify Asset Management, said companies are holding back.
“Companies are increasingly citing confusion and uncertainty around their planning and capital spending and hiring decisions — and when they pause, it means that they’re slowing down,” Michael said. “There’s an element of that playing out in the markets.”
FedEx, Nike, and Tesla help drag stocks lower
FedEx led the losses Friday morning after cutting its earnings outlook. The company cited “weakness and uncertainty in the U.S. industrial economy.” Shares fell 8% in early trading. The company didn’t offer new guidance beyond that, but traders dumped the stock anyway.
Nike didn’t fare much better. Shares dropped about 5%, after executives warned that sales this quarter would miss expectations. Tariffs and low consumer confidence were blamed for the dip. The stock eventually fell more than 7% and hit a new 52-week low, pulling its market cap below $100 million.
The quarter got worse as it went on, and Don Bilson from Gordon Haskett said things don’t look better for next year. “The forecast wasn’t very pretty,” Don said. He added that new CEO Elliott Hill, who rejoined Nike five months ago after leaving in 2020, doesn’t expect a “meaningful bounce back” in fiscal 2026.
Tesla got hit too, which really is just the usual now. Adam Jonas, lead stock analyst at Morgan Stanley, dropped his price target for the stock from $430 to $410, even though that still implies a 73.5% gain from where the shares closed Thursday. Adam kept it as a top pick, but the numbers told a different story.
He cut his first-quarter delivery estimate down to 351,000 vehicles, which is over 9% lower than the same quarter last year. Adam’s earlier call had been for 415,000 deliveries, which would’ve been a 7% increase year over year. The drop puts more pressure on Tesla heading into the next earnings cycle.
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This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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