CHICAGO, IL -- (Marketwire) -- 02/01/13 -- OCC announced today that total cleared contract volume in January reached 365,027,878 contracts. This represents an 8 percent increase from the January 2012 volume of 337,222,938 contracts. OCC's options and futures volume was up significantly last month, making it the second highest January for OCC cleared contract volume on record behind January 2011. OCC's stock loan program also reported a strong start to the year.

Options: Exchange-listed options trading volume in January reached 361,071,621 contracts, an 8 percent increase from January 2012. Equity options trading volume was up 4 percent from the previous January with 327,265,575 contracts. Index options trading volume was up 53 percent from the previous January with 33,806,046 contracts. Average daily options volume for the month was 17,193,887 contracts.

Futures: Futures cleared by OCC reached 3,956,257 contracts in January, a 117 percent increase from January 2012. Equity futures volume reached 537,739 contracts, an increase of 78 percent from January 2012. Index and other futures volume was up 125 percent from January 2012 with 3,418,518 contracts. OCC cleared an average of 188,393 futures contracts per day in January 2013.

Securities Lending: OCC's securities lending CCP activities saw a 57 percent increase in new loans over January 2012 with 100,574 transactions last month. The average daily loan value at OCC in January 2013 was $44,231,813,101.

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                                                                      Avg.
            Jan 2013    Jan 2012    Total    YTD. Avg.   YTD. Avg.   Daily
             Total       Total     Contract    Daily       Daily    Contract
            Contract    Contract   % Change  Contract    Contract   % Change
             Volume      Volume    vs. 2012    2013        2012     vs. 2012
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Equity
 Options  327,265,575  313,363,017    4.44%  15,584,075  15,668,151   -0.54%
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Index
 Options   33,806,046   22,036,982   53.41%   1,609,812   1,101,849   46.10%
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Total
 Options  361,071,621  335,399,999    7.65%  17,193,887  16,770,000    2.53%
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Equity
 Futures      537,739      301,804   78.17%      25,607      15,090   69.70%
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Index /
 Other
 Futures    3,418,518    1,521,135  124.73%     162,787      76,057  114.03%
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Total
 Futures    3,956,257    1,822,939  117.03%     188,393      91,147  106.69%
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Total
 Volume   365,027,878  337,222,938    8.25%  17,382,280  16,861,147    3.09%
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About OCC

OCC is the world's largest equity derivatives clearing organization. Founded in 1973, OCC operates under the jurisdiction of both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a Registered Clearing Agency and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a Derivatives Clearing Organization. OCC now provides central counterparty (CCP) clearing and settlement services to 17 exchanges and trading platforms for options, financial and commodity futures, security futures and securities lending transactions. More information about OCC is available at www.theocc.com.