Brace for wild trading on Friday as a huge wave of options is set to expire
The stock market could be in for a bumpy landing this week, with a massive amount of options set to expire on Friday. John Marshall, head of Goldman Sachs' derivatives research team, said in a note to clients Thursday that Wall Street is poised for the largest notional value for May options expirations on record. "We estimate that over $2.8 trillion of notional options exposure will expire tomorrow (05/16), including $1.2 trillion of SPX options and $580 billion notional of single stock options," Marshall said in the note. Large options expiration days sometimes coincide with unusually volatile trading sessions, especially in the final hour of the day. That means investors may want to take any market move on Friday with a grain of salt, even if it spoils what has been a stellar week for stocks so far. .SPX 1Y mountain The S & P 500 has seen an above average 12-month return, even with April's tariff-related sell-off. Of course, the fact that Friday will be the biggest May expiration ever is perhaps not that much of a surprise, given the boom in options trading among the retail investor crowd and the fact that the S & P 500 is up 11% over the past year, and more than 100% over the past five years. But even on a relative basis, the options expiries will be unusually large. "Options expiring tomorrow represent a notional value that is equal to 4.6% of the Russell 3000 market capitalization. This expiration's relative size is the highest for a May since 2017," the Goldman note said. — CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed reporting.
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