Mini Options (Historical)
Note (2026): Equity and ETF Mini Options listed by Cboe around March 2013 are no longer available. They were discontinued after about a year due to low trading interest. This page is kept as a short historical note so older references still make sense. Today, beginners should focus on standard 100-share equity/ETF options, weekly expirations, and (where offered) other reduced-notional products such as certain index mini contracts—always check current contract specifications with your broker or the exchange.
What was a Mini Option?
A Mini Option traded like a regular listed option, with one important
difference: instead of usually representing 100 shares
of the underlying, a Mini Option represented just 10 shares.
Why did that matter? For expensive stocks, a standard option’s premium (quoted per share, then multiplied by 100) could require a large cash outlay. A 10-share mini reduced that notional to about one-tenth, which was the marketing appeal at the time. Of course, the mini also controlled only one-tenth as many shares, so dollar profits and losses scaled down too.
When they launched on March 18, 2013, mini options were authorized on only five underlyings:
|
Symbol
|
Name
|
|
SPY
|
SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPDR is pronounced "Spider").
|
|
AAPL
|
Apple Inc.
|
|
GLD
|
SPDR Gold Trust
|
|
GOOG
|
Google Inc. (as named at the time; today Alphabet)
|
|
AMZN
|
Amazon.com, Inc.
|
Older examples on this site that mention Apple near $600/share reflect pre-split prices from that era. They are not current quotes.