We are seeing MASSIVE swings in markets right now:
Between 11:55 AM ET and 12:25 PM ET, the S&P 500 erased -$450 billion in market cap.
23 minutes later and $320 billion in market cap has been added back.
That's a $720 BILLION swing in market cap in under 1 hour.
Capitalize… pic.twitter.com/88bfWEEP1V
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) December 18, 2025
Wall Street could be in for a volatile end to the week as traders brace for what Goldman Sachs says will be the largest options expiration on record.
Options expiration days are a monthly occurrence on Wall Street when the contracts on short-term derivatives expire. Friday happens to be one of the rare times (four times a year) when options on four types of securities expire on the same day: index options, single stock options, index futures and index futures options. This is called a “quadruple witching” day.
More than $7.1 trillion in notional options exposure is set to expire this Friday, according to Goldman, including roughly $5 trillion tied to the S&P 500
index and $880 billion linked to single stocks. December options expirations are typically the biggest of the year, but this one eclipses all prior records, the firm said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/18/friday-could-be-a-wild-day-of-trading-on-wall-street-heres-why.html
Options expiration (“OpEx”) forces:
- massive hedging adjustments
- dealer repositioning
- volatility spikes
- potential “gamma squeezes” or “air pockets” in liquidity
When the notional value is this huge, even small moves can cascade.