NYSE Launches Extended-Hours Options Trading, With 23-Hour Days Coming December 6, per CNBC
Options trading before the bell and after the close
The New York Stock Exchange has launched extended-hours options trading, per CNBC, covering 29 big stocks and ETFs including Nvidia, Bank of America, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust and the iShares Russell 2000 ETF. The new sessions began Monday, October 19, running from 7:30 a.m. to 9:25 a.m. Eastern Time before the open and from 4:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. after the close.
The New York Stock Exchange has launched extended-hours options trading, per CNBC, covering 29 big stocks and ETFs including Nvidia, Bank of America, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust and the iShares Russell 2000 ETF.
Starting December 6, trading in those same names will stretch to 23 hours a day, five days a week. The early sessions are narrow by design: only limit orders are accepted, market maker quoting is voluntary, and stop, good-till-cancelled, complex and cross orders are not supported. Volume on the first day was light, with Tesla options leading activity at a little over 3,000 contracts, almost all of them calls, ahead of the company's earnings report on Wednesday.
The race to round-the-clock markets
The NYSE, which is owned and operated by Intercontinental Exchange, is the second major exchange to move. Cboe announced first that it will introduce extended trading for options on 25 individual stocks and five ETFs, and Cboe has reported record extended-hours options activity averaging more than 199,000 contracts a day. The push mirrors what already happened in crypto, where markets never close, and in the SEC-approved plans for 23-hour equity sessions that are also set to begin on December 6.
"Markets have changed tremendously over the years, and that kind of progress only happens when you keep investing in your technology," said Kevin Tyrrell, the NYSE's chief product officer, in a statement. The exchange is pitching the longer day as a risk-management tool, giving traders a way to react to earnings and overnight news in the most heavily traded names in the market instead of waiting for the 9:30 a.m. open.
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Options market and stocks to watch
The exchange operators are the direct read: ICE, which owns the NYSE, and CBOE are both selling the same longer trading day, and extended sessions are incremental transaction revenue on contracts they already list. For traders, the names that matter are the ones on the list, led by NVDA and SPY: expect the first real test of extended-hours liquidity on an earnings night, when spreads outside regular hours are the cost of trading closer to the news.
Watch how quickly extended-session volume builds from the quiet first day, and whether brokers pass the access through to retail accounts before the December 6 expansion. Follow options flow in the 29 covered names on the Unusual Whales news feed.
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