Trading & Options · Profile from Trading and Options Research Companion
Options Clearing Corporation (OCC)
The Chicago clearing house that stands behind every US listed equity, ETF and index option — the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer, whichever of the 18 US options exchanges the trade happened on. Founded in 1973 with the opening of listed options, OCC became the single clearing utility for a market that cleared 15,207,163,554 options contracts in 2025 (+24.4% from 12,224,227,606 in 2024), inside a total of 15,263,912,452 cleared contracts (OCC release, 5 Jan 2026; Shared facts). It is owned by exchanges, regulated by the SEC as a clearing agency and by the CFTC as a derivatives clearing organization, and was designated a systemically important financial market utility in Jul 2012. Its recent history is less about volume than about the layer that protects everyone when margin fails — capital: a 2015 capital plan funded by its exchange owners was approved by the SEC (11 Feb 2016), remanded by the D.C. Circuit on a challenge led by Susquehanna and rival exchanges (8 Aug 2017) and disapproved by the SEC on 13 Feb 2019 (Release 34-85121); and the SEC and CFTC fined OCC $20m in Sep 2019 for risk-management failures and again (CFTC $5m, SEC reported $17m) on 16 Feb 2023, after its clearing fund was found $200m–$588m short at times between Oct 2019 and May 2021. For a trader, OCC is invisible until it matters: its margin model, exercise-by-exception rules and default waterfall decide whether one firm's failure stays one firm's problem.
At a glance
- Founded
- 1973, as the clearing house for listed options when the Cboe opened (26 Apr 1973); described as founded to clear for five listed equity options markets (Wikipedia via C08 fetch; earlier name Cboe Clearing Corporation and renaming date — from memory, verify)
- Headquarters
- Chicago, Illinois
- Ownership / structure
- Industry utility owned by exchanges: five stockholder exchanges in 2019 — Cboe, ISE, NASDAQ OMX PHLX, NYSE MKT and NYSE Arca, effectively three owners (Cboe, Nasdaq, ICE) (SEC Release 34-85121, Feb 2019); other exchanges are non-stockholder participants
- Leadership
- Founded and long led by Wayne Luthringshausen (chairman and CEO in 2011); Craig Donohue executive chairman from 1 Jan 2014 (Wikipedia via C08 fetch); later CEOs not checked in C08 (verify)
- Regulators
- SEC (registered clearing agency; Regulation SCI; clearing agency standards Rule 17Ad-22); CFTC (registered DCO for futures it clears); FSOC-designated SIFMU (Jul 2012) with heightened Federal Reserve involvement
- What it clears
- All US listed equity, ETF and index options (multiply listed and proprietary), some futures, and stock-loan programmes (OTC Stock Loan, AQS) (Wikipedia via C08 fetch)
- Scale (dated)
- Options cleared: ~4.17bn total contracts (2016, Wikipedia); 5.24bn total (2018, OCC release title); 7.52bn total / 7.47bn options (2020); 9.93bn total / 9.87bn options (2021) (OCC release, 4 Jan 2022, via search); 12,224,227,606 options (2024); 15,207,163,554 options, 15,263,912,452 total (2025); 32 highest-volume days ever in 2025, two above 100m; single-day record ~110m on 10 Oct 2025 (secondary, verify) (Shared facts). About $100bn of collateral from ~115 clearing members (Wikipedia, undated — verify)
- Margin models
- TIMS (1980s–2006); STANS from 2006 (Wikipedia via C08 fetch)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Founding and central clearing (1973); Black Monday strains (1987); STANS (2006); SIFMU designation (2012); the capital plan, its litigation and SEC disapproval (2015–19); $20m SEC/CFTC penalties (2019); clearing-fund underfunding penalties (2023); record volumes and the 0DTE load (2020–26)
8 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
1973
Founding and Central Clearing for Listed Options
Founding — market structure (central counterparty and standardised contracts)
1987
Black Monday Settlement Strains
Crisis response — margin calls and settlement under stress
2006
STANS Replaces TIMS
Risk-model change — clearing-member margin methodology
2012
SIFMU Designation and Dodd Frank
Regulatory status — designation as a systemically important financial market utility
2015
Capital Plan Litigation and 2019 Disapproval
Capital raise and fee/dividend policy, then legal challenge and regulatory reversal
2019
SEC CFTC Risk Management Penalties
Regulatory and enforcement action (settled)
2023
Clearing Fund Underfunding Penalties
Control failure, then regulatory and enforcement action (settled)
2025
Record Volumes and the 0DTE Load
Scale and capacity — clearing a market that grew ~3.5×