Thursday, August 16, was something of a banner day for many exchanges (although, at the same time, it was also probably the worst day in recent history for commodities). It also comes on the heels of another very recent record-breaking day for some exchanges: August 9. However, record volume days have not exactly been hard to come by lately.

NYSE Euronext reported a new volume record, with 5.70 billion shares of U.S. cash-listed equities traded on its NYSE Group exchanges. However, it's not that unexpected or exciting - the exchange's top ten heavy-volume days are all in the second half of 2007, and seven of them have been in August. This latest record exceeds that of August 9 (5.34 billion) by nearly 7%.

The NASDAQ broke its most recent volume record - also from August 9 - on August 16, with 3.73 billion shares traded. That's up from 3.31 billion shares on August 9, an increase of almost 13%.

The CBOE had the busiest day in its 34 years of history, trading 9.24 million contracts, a stunning increase of 33% over its record of 6.95 million contracts, set on July 26. It was also a record-breaking day for the entire U.S. options industry, with nearly 24 million contracts traded - 40% of which were traded on the CBOE. According to the CBOE, its options volume on August 16 was the highest one-day volume traded on any U.S. options exchange ever.

New volume records were set by index and ETF options, with 5.72 million contracts traded, representing 62% of the CBOE's total volume that day. The new record was up 43% from the old record of 4.01 million contracts set on March 16, 2006. Of the index and ETF options, three individual contracts set new volume records. The S&P 500 (SPX) traded 2.07 million contracts, beating its old record of 1.83 million, set on March 14, 2007. Meanwhile, the Russell 2000 Index (RUT) and the iShares Russell 2000 Index Fund (IWM) both set new records, with 151,130 and 987,870 contracts traded, respectively, exceeding their old records by 25% and by nearly 9%.

And although the CBOE did not have a record-breaking day on August 9, the week ended August 10 was the busiest in its history, with a total of 28 million contracts traded, and it included four of the exchange's top 10 trading days in terms of volume.

August 16 was also a big day for the CME, although technically not the busiest in its history - just the second-busiest, with a total of 23.34 million contracts traded. However, equity products did reach a new high for futures and options on futures, combined, of 7.60 million contracts, exceeding the old record by almost 28%.

The E-mini products also set new volume records. E-mini S&P 500 futures saw 4.83 million contracts trade, up 32% from their old record of 3.65 million on July 26. Meanwhile, 982,738 E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures contracts traded, up 11% from 884,662 on June 8. E-mini Russell 2000 futures contracts, which will stop trading on the CME next year due to the International Commodity Exchange's exclusive contract, saw a nearly 10% increase over their record of 587,230 on June 7 to 644,714. Mini-sized Dow Jone ($5) futures and options had a combined volume of 415,856, exceeding their previous high of 367,130 on August 10 by more than 13%. And E-mini S&P 500 options on futures saw more than 214,000 contracts trade, breaking a one-day record of 189,014 set on July 26.

The International Securities Exchange (ISE) also reached new highs in terms of volume. Combined trading in equity, index and FX (foreign exchange) options was 6.53 million contracts, exceeding the previous high of 6.23 million contracts from July 27 by nearly 5%. Meanwhile, 243,572 index options contracts traded on the exchange, a 15% increase from the old August 8 record of 212,447. The entirely electronic ISE Stock Exchange saw a 45% increase to a volume of 77.44 million on August 16 versus  53.23 million on that other very busy day, August 9.

Exchanges have been cheerfully bursting through volume records for the last several weeks, even as the markets themselves have been in turmoil, which stands to reason. With the effects of the subprime lending collapse rolling through every sector of the economy, it seems likely that more records will be regularly broken in the foreseeable future until things settle down. And August 16 will likely go down in history as a day of record exchange volumes - until next week.