The 530pm est is an OCC rule. Each broker will have a different time when they will require exercise instructions. Most seem to want the information by 5pm in order to give them enough time to notify the OCC.
Do you have a link that specifies the time? Both OCC and CBOE appears to be lacking that info on the web. They mention the day, but no time. EDIT: A more specific question: What time do options expire? I can't find that info anywhere.
I have seen similar cases but IB will liquidate on Monday at 15 minutes after open time frame. A while ago one of my friends sold 130 PUT and bought 127 PUT for AAPL in his IRA account. It looks risk is limited in these situations you should close the position if is not in a desirable range on Friday. AAPL closed at 129 and he was assigned the shares and his account could not hold that big position and he was liquidated between 9:30 to 9:45 on Monday.
Equity options expire at 4pm est Your clearing firm has to 5:30pm est for an exception, your time to ask for that will vary from firm to firm.
Let me try to understand this. 4:00PM The market closes. 4:01PM I go to the bar to spend the money I made dumping a ton of "worthless" calls. 5:29PM The after-hours action moves the stock to ITM territory. The call holder files for an exception. Next Monday: I am holding the bag or facing liquidation?
Lets get back to FSU's post: IB has a deadline of 4:30 PM, some brokers 4:00PM (BMO InvestorLine) - I doubt any broker will allow a retail trader the luxury of making a decision to exercise options past 4:30PM. TWTR's range from 4:00PM to 4:30PM on Friday was $36.9835 to $37.04. FSU post is just hearsay and not based on fact.
So all of that is confined within my clearing firm (IBKR)? I can't have some guy from XYZ Clearing processing exercised puts 4:45, an exception, and calling IB's clearinghouse to make me buy the stock. So Miller time for me is 4:31, although other firms are still getting exceptions.
Forget about auto-exercise, I think the more important issue here is the quality of beer you've been drinking, xandman.
Lol, Hearsay and not fact. You can get the facts from your own brokers I said each broker will have their own deadlines. My experiences with my brokers are, Think or Swim, anything after 450pm est is "best efforts." Apex clearing also is 5pm est and "best efforts" after that. With my Goldman Sachs account I have made instructions as late as 520 est. I quite often play the after hours expiration market in VXX, SPY and sometimes active stocks such as Google and Apple. Slightly out of the money VXX options often seem to be cheap the most often. I may buy them at .02 and then either scalp the stock after hours or simply buy or sell the stock after hours and exercise the options.