ICE Shatters Records: First-Half 2025 Contracts Volume Hits All-Time High

ICE just flexed its market dominance—Q1-Q2 2025 saw more contracts fly across its platforms than any six-month period in history. Traders piled in despite (or because of) the usual macroeconomic circus.

Behind the numbers: While legacy finance celebrates paper gains, crypto derivatives quietly ate another slice of the pie. But hey, at least ICE's servers didn't crash this time.

One cynical take: Nothing like volatility and FOMO to make spreadsheets go brrr. The suits win again—until the next margin call.

Intercontinental Exchange, a leading global provider of technology and data and home of the most liquid energy markets in the world, announced that the first half of 2025 marked a record for volumes traded across ICE’s markets with a record 1.2 billion ICE futures and options contracts traded, with record average daily volume of 10 million contracts, of which approximately 6 million were commodity contracts.

The first half of 2025 saw record:

• Energy trading volumes with 673.4 million energy futures and options contracts traded
• Oil trading with 400.8 million oil futures and options contracts traded
• Natural gas trading with 250.8 million natural gas futures and options contracts traded
• Environmental trading with 10.6 million futures and options contracts traded
• Financials trading with 512.0 million futures and options contracts traded
• Interest rate trading with 461.9 million interest rate futures and options contracts traded

Across ICE’s global benchmarks, H1 2025 saw record traded volumes in:

• ICE Brent with 211.4 million futures and options traded
• ICE Gasoil with 53.5 million futures and options traded
• ICE WTI with 55.3 million futures and options traded
• ICE TTF natural gas with 61.2 million futures and options traded
• ICE Euribor with 283.3 million futures and options traded
• ICE SONIA with 114.0 million futures and options traded

“In these market conditions, customers favor liquidity and the record first half for volumes traded has been accompanied by record open interest in June as customers utilize the liquidity across ICE’s markets to manage risk exposure across asset classes,” said Trabue Bland, SVP, Futures Exchanges at ICE. “As our customers seek price transparency for every point of their exposure, we thank each of our customers for their continued trust in our markets.”

Volumes across ICE’s markets are up 24% year-over-year, with open interest up 10%.

Source: ICE