Open interest across Commodities & Energy, including Oil, Natural Gas and ICE Brent at all-time highs

Record 3.57 billion shares traded at NYSE Closing Auction, with record notional of $230.5 billion traded

Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE), one of the world's leading providers of financial market technology and data powering global capital markets, today reported on the trading activity across its global derivatives markets, as well as in equities trading at the New York Stock Exchange, as customers respond to events in the Middle East beginning February 28, 2026.

ICE's Brent, Gasoil, Murban, Dubai, and TTF markets have continued to serve as the global benchmarks for crude, refined products, and natural gas, providing real time price transparency as customers hedge risk and respond to heightened geopolitical uncertainty.

Record Open Interest Across Key Benchmarks

ICE's commodity markets have hit consistent open interest records throughout March 2026. Most recently on March 25, 2026, open interest reached new all time highs across commodity futures and options, underscoring the depth and liquidity of ICE's benchmark portfolio and the continued adoption of ICE's markets as global risk management tools. The open interest records include:

  • Record 76.8 million contracts in commodity futures and options
  • Record 72.7 million in energy futures and options
  • Record 46.6 million in natural gas futures and options, including a record 40.1 million in North American natural gas futures and options
  • Record 19.8 million in total oil futures and options, including a record 8.3 million in ICE Brent futures and options – the highest level in the global benchmark's history

ICE's options markets have been heavily utilized by participants with ICE's commodity, energy, oil, and ICE Brent options markets at record open interest of 32.5 million, 30.8 million, 8.4 million and 5.1 million respectively.

On March 12, 2026, ICE's markets reached record open interest of 125.4 million, including a record 51.2 million financial futures and options as customers manage changing expectations for inflation and interest rates.

Largest Trading Days in ICE History

On March 3, 2026, ICE recorded the highest daily volume in its history, with 35 million futures and options contracts traded. This included the highest volume trading days in:

Energy & Commodities

  • 15 million commodity related contracts traded
  • 14.5 million energy contracts traded
  • 9.3 million oil contracts traded, including 1.4 million ICE Gasoil futures and options - the global price benchmark and most liquid middle distillate contract in the world
  • 4.9 million natural gas futures and options
  • 2.4 million ICE TTF futures and options — reinforcing TTF's role as the global price benchmark for natural gas

Financial Futures & Options

  • 19.9 million financial futures and options traded
    • Record volumes in ICE's European short term interest rate benchmarks, including 11.5 million Euribor futures and options. SONIA has hit several record volume days including most recently on March 19, 2026, with 6.7 SONIA futures and options traded.

Meanwhile on March 20, 2026, ICE reached new records for equities trading at the New York Stock Exchange as well as in credit default swaps (CDS) clearing. A record 3.57 billion shares were traded at the NYSE's Closing Auction, with a record notional of $230.5 billion traded, while a record $2.678 trillion in notional CDS cleared at ICE Clear Credit that day. The NYSE is the world's largest equities exchange and the gold standard for trading technology, while ICE operates the largest clearing house in the world for clearing credit default swaps.

The NYSE Closing Auction remains the single largest daily liquidity event in U.S. cash equities trading, combining the NYSE's state-of-the-art Pillar trading technology with direct market maker facilitation to produce key anchor prices for listed companies. The previous record NYSE Closing Auction by volume was set on March 21, 2025.