At-a-Glance
Key Takeaways with Craig
Due to travel schedules, we will be using the Key Takeaways column to showcase one of CME's resources available on its website. Today we will be re-introducing a fairly simple tool, but one that we think has tremendous value, especially as CME has introduced more and more expirations in its options markets. While the addition of expirations in the different markets has provided customers with greater flexibility and precision in their exposure, it has added some complexity, and it is important to know precisely all of the attributes and characteristics of the option one is trading.
The Contract Directory and Calendar provides users with a single destination at which they can learn the option expiration (both date AND time), option style, the underlying future, the underlying future expiration and much more.
For example, in the excerpt we have included below, the top image shows illustrates the different markets a user can choose from to find the option in which they are interested. In this case, we selected the E-mini Nasdaq-100 options which brings up the calendar you see on the left side. Each of the symbols in the daily box on the calendar represents a day on which an E-mini Nasdaq-100 option expires. In our case, we selected the Friday, May 19th expiry. Selecting this calls up the information you see on the right side about the option itself:
- The Symbol
- On what Day and at what time it expires
- How many days until it expires (we wrote the current column on Tuesday so there were 2 days until expiration)
- It is a European style option
- It is deliverable versus cash settled
- And much more
You can also see that there is a tab called "Future" on the top of the right side which would pull up similar information for the future that underlies this option.
To underscore the value in this tool, if one was trading the quarterly E-mini Nasdaq-100 that expires on Friday, June 16th, that option would expire at 9:30 AM Eastern time and is American style, which means it can be exercised prior to expiration. Both are very important elements of that particular option and different from many of the other E-mini Nasdaq-100 expirations and this tool provides a single destination to ensure that you are aware of such characteristics. We encourage all of our In FOCUS readers to check it out here.
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