http://www.cboe.com/micro/weeklys/introduction.aspx Beginning on Thursday, July 1, 2010 all new Weekly option series at CBOE will begin trading on Thursdays and expire the following Friday. Previously, new series were listed each Friday and expired the following Friday. No new Weeklys are listed that would expire during the expiration week for standard options (the third Friday of each month). In other words, we do not list new Weeklys on the 2nd Thursday of a month and do not trade Weeklys during the following, standard expiration week until new series are listed on Thursday of that week. Press Release - CBOE EXPANDS WEEKLY OPTIONS BY ONE DAY CBOE offers the following cash-settled Index Weeklys: SPX : S&P 500 Index Weeklys with European-style options on the S&P 500 Index with Friday A.M. settlement (last day of trading is a Thursday). XSP (Mini-SPX) Weeklys : A 1/10th size version of SPX Weeklys traded on the CBOE Hybrid Trading System. OEX Weeklys : One-week, American-style options on the S&P 100 Index with Friday P.M. settlement (last day of trading is a Friday). XEO Weeklys : A European-style version of OEX Weeklys. And Weeklys on Exchange Traded Funds and equities. As of June 25, 2010, these included the following:: SPY - Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts QQQQ - Nasdaq-100 Index Tracking Stock IWM - iShares Russell 2000 Index Fund GLD - Options on SPDR® Gold Shares XLF - Financial Select Sector SPDR EEM - iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index C - Citigroup Inc BAC - Bank of America Corp AAPL - Apple Inc BP - BP PLC Weekly options on ETFs and equities are physically settled and have an American-style exercise feature. The last day of trading for ETF and equity Weeklys is Friday and they are p.m. settled. http://www.cboe.com/micro/weeklys/introduction.aspx
" the devil is in the details." it is probably a big deal or they wouldn't have changed it. perhaps some poster can give an explanation for the change.
My comment about this not being a big deal refers to the fact that this is not a new product, they just added an extra day to the existing ones.
The big deal is, with the addition of opening Thursday trading, weekly option traders can now roll positions week to week. That's significant - in the past, since the SPX options are Friday AM settled, you'd have to tread water until the SET was announced and prior positions cleared - usually about noon on Friday. There could be (and recently has been) a lot of market movement from Thursday close to Friday noon.
How will this effect the regular options? Will people trade the regular options less, lower demand because of these weekly options? Also what is the point of these contracts. If you want to sell a contract with only a week left, you can just sell the ones with 7 days left in the month. Not sure how this is better?
*yawn* this isn't a big change. like someone said they're just adding one day to the life cycle. it doesn't affect trading except perhaps lets you play a major government announcement like GDP, which is released friday morning before the 'old' weeklies begin trading. the problem remains their low volume
this will add a new meaning to selling a put to own a stock. iow perhaps not as many folks willing to buy underlying.
Some poor sucker will get them mixed up with the regular expiring options and think they expire on the 17th - July as an example - When in fact they might expire a week earlier. I'm sure this will happen a few times with a buyer who thought the options were very cheap.