(Bloomberg) — Stocks fell at the end of a jittery week as tech sold off and a pile of options expiring Friday amplified market swings.
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Wall Street faced a quarterly episode ominously known as triple witching — in which derivatives contracts tied to stocks, index options and futures matured — compelling traders en masse to roll over their existing positions or to start new ones. About 19 billion shares changed hands on US exchanges. That’s roughly 60% above the three-month average volume.
“It’s a day in which the direction of the market is very, very difficult to predict,” said Matt Maley at Miller Tabak. “The ‘internals’ get so skewed by the expiration that they don’t tell us anything. It will be important that investors don’t use today’s action when trying to decipher what is going to happen in the marketplace next week and beyond.”
About $5.3 trillion were set to expire Friday,…
