Whenever derivatives contracts mature in bulk, the market feels like it’s hit the turbo button. This Friday, the global financial markets will face a "Quarterly Storm"—the third Friday of March, June, September, and December, known as "Triple Witching." Stock index futures, options, and single-stock options all expire simultaneously, with a nominal value of about $6.5 trillion needing to be either closed out or rolled over. Just thinking about the scale of this is mind-boggling.

Have you seen quarterly settlements, large-scale liquidations, or exchange withdrawal surges in the crypto space? Combine these phenomena, multiply by ten, and you get roughly the rhythm of a day on Wall Street. Even giants like Goldman Sachs describe this volume as "terrifying."

In fact, for traders accustomed to leverage liquidations, this logic is nothing new. Market makers and hedge funds, aiming to control their risk exposure, often execute a wave of concentrated trades before expiration. The result is: short-term market volatility is sharply amplified, as if someone stepped on the gas.

Triple Witching occurs four times a year—on the third Friday of March, June, September, and December. Why does it stir the market so much? The key is that it disrupts the normal trading rhythm. When a massive number of options contracts are nearing expiration, market makers and brokerages must hedge accordingly, engaging in corresponding buying and selling.

This creates the "Pinning Effect"—stock prices tend to gravitate toward the most active options strike prices. In the crypto world, a similar situation occurs when a bunch of options expire at a certain price point, making the token price easily "magnetized" toward that level.

According to data from research institutions, the scale of this expiration is unprecedented.