ANNOUNCEMENT:
I’ll be on holiday from 28th of June to 4th of July. There will be only a weekly post on 27/June.
Weekly post:
Starting July 13, 2026 (Monday), Cboe Options Exchange (C1) will introduce pre-market and a short post-market session for the most liquid single-stock equity options. This means that options on names such as NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, AMD, AVGO, and PLTR will be tradable from 7:30 a.m. ET, and again from 4:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. ET.
At launch, this will only apply to roughly the 20 most liquid equity options, not the entire universe.
Initially (July–August), the impact is expected to be relatively limited, as trading volume in the new sessions will likely be low. As participants — particularly Asian and European institutions — become accustomed to the new hours, the dynamics should gradually evolve.
Until now, a significant portion of gamma exposure simply “jumped over” the night. Going forward, gamma hedging in the most important names will become more continuous during the pre-market session. This could theoretically reduce the size and volatility of morning gaps in these stocks. Similarly, overnight gaps in IV may become smaller, as pre-market trading will allow overnight news and global price movements to be priced in more gradually. This effect should be particularly noticeable in short-dated options (0DTE, 1DTE, and weeklies).
Theta short sellers, on the other hand, will be quite happy about this development…
Let’s look at today’s positioning…
