Key points
- Cboe opens a 7:30 a.m. ET session Monday, Aug. 17, for 21 stocks including NVDA, TSLA and AAPL, the first single-stock options to trade before the bell.
- Limit orders only. Market, stop and stop-limit orders get rejected in the new sessions.
- A second window runs 4:00 to 4:15 p.m. ET, and NVDA's Aug. 26 results are due at about 4:20, after it closes.
- Alibaba reports Thursday with its call at 7:30 a.m. ET, the first of the 21 to land inside the session.
There's some exciting news for options traders next week. On Monday, Aug. 17, you can trade single-stock options at 7:30 a.m. ET on Cboe Options Exchange, two hours before the regular open. The exchange named 21 stocks for the first session, including Nvidia (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), Apple (AAPL), and Alibaba (BABA). Order acceptance begins at 7:15 a.m., and the session runs to 9:25 a.m., five minutes before the regular open.
A second window runs from 4:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. ET after the market closes. Cboe calls it the Curb session. Both new sessions run Monday through Friday, and neither runs on the market holidays that already shift options expiration around.
Whether you can access the Monday session depends entirely on your broker, not the exchange itself. While Cboe's bulletin outlines exchange connectivity rules for trading permit holders, noting that entities already cleared for Global Trading Hours require no extra steps, it remains silent on which consumer-facing trading apps will actually direct orders to the venue from day one.
The rollout date was previously shifted. Initially slated for July 13 by Cboe's first announcement, the schedule was later pushed back to August 17 because a connected rule filing was still awaiting regulatory clearance.
Back on May 28, when the SEC gave its green light, Cboe's head of U.S. derivatives, Meaghan Dugan, called it "an important milestone for the U.S. options industry, as Cboe continues to take the lead in expanding market access to meet growing demand from investors globally." Starting with a short roster of single-name options is "a measured approach to help ensure market safeguards and investor protections remain in place," Dugan said.
Index options already trade overnight
Cboe has run an overnight session for four index options for years. SPX, VIX, XSP and RUT trade from 8:15 p.m. to 9:25 a.m. ET, Sunday evening through Friday morning, plus a Curb session from 4:15 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday extends the idea to single stocks for the first time, on a shorter morning schedule that opens at 7:30.
That overnight index market has been growing. Cboe's Global Trading Hours session recently accounted for more than 4% of total SPX options volume, up from about 3% months earlier, according to tastytrade, which turned on Global Trading Hours index options for its own customers on Aug. 10.
"Institutional traders have always had access to the overnight session, and we're putting that same capability in the hands of the active retail traders who will actually use it," said Pete Mulmat, head of brokerage at tastytrade and IGNA. The firm said single-stock options in the extended session are the next step, with a goal of offering them "on day one."
Which 21 stocks are in it
Cboe's notice lists AAPL, AMD, AMZN, AVGO, BABA, BAC, GOOG, GOOGL, HOOD, INTC, META, MSFT, MU, NFLX, NOK, NVDA, ORCL, PFE, PLTR, TSLA and TSM. Every series in an eligible class trades in the new sessions, including the Monday and Wednesday expirations.
To qualify, an option class needs average daily volume of 150,000 contracts or higher, and the underlying stock needs a market capitalization of $50 billion or higher along with average daily volume of 10 million shares or higher. Cboe capped the program at 100 option classes and rebalances the list twice a year, on January-through-June and July-through-December data.
What kind of orders work
Only limit orders. "Market orders, stop orders, and stop-limit orders are not accepted during GTH or Curb sessions and will be rejected at order entry," Cboe wrote in its technical FAQ, using its own name for the morning window, Global Trading Hours.
Every order carries a session eligibility tag. One marked for regular hours only won't be actionable at 7:30 a.m. One marked for all sessions carries across. If a firm marks an all-sessions order in a stock that is not on the 21-name list, Cboe said it won't reject the order, it will treat the order as regular-hours-only and leave it resting until 9:30 a.m.
Trades in the two new sessions aren't last-sale eligible and don't count toward the day's high and low. Cboe marks them with an Extended Hours "v" sale condition when it reports them to OPRA, the consolidated tape for options quotes and trades.
Multi-leg orders work in both new sessions with one exception. Cboe said combinations that carry a stock leg, such as a buy-write entered as one order, trade only during regular hours and the Curb session, not in the morning.
Alibaba Thursday, Nvidia the week after
Alibaba reports June quarter results before the U.S. market opens on Thursday, Aug. 20, and holds its call at 7:30 a.m. ET, the minute the new session starts. It's the first name on the 21-stock list to report after Monday's launch.
Nvidia reports second-quarter fiscal 2027 results on Wednesday, Aug. 26, for the quarter ended July 26. NVIDIA said results are "publicly announced at approximately 1:20 p.m. PT," which is 4:20 p.m. ET, with the call at 5 p.m. ET. The Curb session closes at 4:15. For scale on what an options market prices into a chip earnings report, the straddle on AMD's August report marked at 9.7% going in.
Expiration day keeps its old math. Expiring single-stock options trade until 4:15 p.m. in the Curb session, but the Options Clearing Corp. still marks closing and settlement prices off the 4:00 p.m. ET national best bid and offer, and still decides which contracts finish in the money off the 4:00 p.m. closing price of the stock. Time value in an expiring contract bleeds out fastest in that last stretch either way.
What Cboe says about the early session
Cboe raised the liquidity question in its own FAQ. "In the new GTH sessions, trading activity in the underlying securities may likely not be as liquid, potentially leading to more manual intervention from market makers to manage risk," the exchange wrote, adding that the problem "would be exacerbated if/when other exchanges also expand trading hours."
Maximum quote width rules aren't in force at launch. Cboe said it plans to add them "sometime after the initial SSO GTH implementation, date TBD," with a general figure of $5 and a multiplier for longer-dated LEAPS. In-the-money series may be quoted as wide as the underlying stock.
An option doesn't open at all until its stock prints a round lot and shows a two-sided quote. Cboe changed that trigger for the morning session so that a print on any equities exchange counts, rather than only the stock's primary listing exchange. The Cboe trading floor stays closed until 9:30.
Cboe won't have the early window to itself for long. The SEC granted accelerated approval to Nasdaq MRX to adopt extended trading hours for eligible equity and index options, published in the Federal Register on July 1. MRX proposed the same shape Cboe is using, a 7:30 a.m. to 9:25 a.m. session plus trading past 4:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. Nasdaq hasn't published a start date, and its own options market hours page still lists a 9:30 a.m. open for equity options.
Dugan tied the change to what is already happening in the stocks themselves, saying it will "help better align options trading" in the most heavily traded names "with their underlying securities" as the industry moves toward near-24x5 trading in equities.
Sources
- Cboe Exchange Notice C2026061202: Schedule Update, C1 Options to Offer Expanded Trading Hours for Select Equity Options (Aug. 17 date, session times, the 21 symbols, order types)
- Cboe: Equity Options Extended Trading Hours FAQ (limit-orders-only rule, last-sale and high/low treatment, quote width plans, expiration-day settlement)
- Cboe, May 28, 2026: SEC approval announcement and the Dugan quotes
- NVIDIA: second quarter fiscal 2027 conference call notice (the 1:20 p.m. PT release time)
- Alibaba Group: June quarter 2026 results date and 7:30 a.m. ET call
- Cboe: US options hours and holidays (the existing 8:15 p.m. to 9:25 a.m. index session for SPX, VIX, XSP and RUT)
- tastytrade, Aug. 10, 2026: Global Trading Hours launch (the Mulmat quote, the SPX volume share, the single-stock day-one goal)
This article describes a change to options market hours, not investment advice. Options trading involves substantial risk and is not suitable for every investor. Extended-hours sessions can carry wider spreads and thinner liquidity than regular hours. Always do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decision.
