For who had experienced this, a few questions, thank you in advance. I have a long position in the December 19th expiring ES contract (the one still trading in smaller volume than the leading month contract), and I want to sell a call option that expires on December 20th (say 3195). I still see quote for this on my trading platform (with Gain Capital). Since I have never held the futures pass Thursdays of the expiration week, nor an option position, I have a few questions to ask those who had experienced this. According to https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/e-mini-sandp500_contract_specifications.html, I understand that "Trading terminates at 9:30 a.m. ET on the 3rd Friday of the contract month", that is, the ES contract I have will be settled at the opening of the stock market on Friday. According to https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/eq...html?optionProductId=138#optionProductId=2915, I understand that the matching option will terminate trading at "4:00 p.m. ET on Friday of the named week". So, what will happen if I have ES that is in the money at the moment of ES stopped trading, say, it is trading at 3198, thus the options buyer is having 3 points in the money, still trading, till 4pm EST, what will happen? There could be all kinds of permutations for different scenarios. Please help if you have been through this. Thank you. I will report back in this thread regarding what exactly happened. I am holding two ES contracts long, and aiming at selling 3195 and 3200 calls that expires on Dec. 20th.
All is good EXCEPT both futures and options expire at 9:30 AM EST There is a special settlement price the CME publishes before 10 AM EST and based on that BOTH futures and Dec. quarterly options are settled.
Thank you @ilan; thus the statement at the CME option link https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/eq...html?optionProductId=138#optionProductId=2915 is not correct then? Or, By saying "Dec. quarterly options" are you referring to https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/eq....html?optionProductId=138#optionProductId=138 Can I understand that for a date like December 20th, if there is a weekly option chain, it will be replaced by a monthly chain, and then replaced by the quarterly (American style) chain, and thus for this specific date, there is no weekly, nor monthly chain, all is using the quarterly chain? And this chain stops trading at "9:30 a.m. ET on the 3rd Friday of the contract month". Thank you.
Yes to the best of my knowledge on quarterly expiration or what we call Quadruple witching ( futures, futures options, stock options and single stock futures all expire) there are no weekly options for that Friday. So tomorrow all expire 930 Am est I am very familiar with the GAIN platform, if you need specific help, i will be happy to, feel free to PM me or call the office and ask for me 800 454 9572 / 310 859 9572
As promised, here is what happened. I believe the settlement price was 3219.25 all futures and options on ESZ19 got traded about 52 minutes after 6:30am PST.
it was posted/settled into the software at 7:22 Am pacific but all instruments stopped trading at 630 AM