Traders will soon have 3x as many opportunities to punt short-term options on the biggest US stocks
And that means 3x the opportunities for gamma/pin risk in the largest US stocks (and the biggest bitcoin ETF).
Fantastic news for people who like trading short-term options with not much time to expiry:
The Nasdaq has received approval to list Monday and Wednesday options for a group of single stocks and one ETF, in addition to its normal weekly Friday expiries.
The initial group of companies that will enjoy more listing includes the BATMMAAN group (or the Magnificent 7 plus Broadcom, if you prefer) along with the iShares Bitcoin Trust. Most of these qualifying securities will begin to have their Monday and Wednesday options listed on January 26.
From a market structure perspective, more expiries can mean more gamma, or the potential for more violent intraday volatility in a stock around certain levels. Or, most likely in practice, the exact opposite.
To turn to the Greeks: gamma measures how much more or less sensitive an options price will become to changes in the prices of the underlying asset. Gamma is highest for options that are close to or at their strike prices and increases the closer an options contract gets to expiry. Ergo, more frequent expiries equal more opportunities for potential gamma squeezes.
Imagine you (and half the world) is long Nvidia call options expiring today with a strike price of $180. That’s going to create the potential for much more volatility if news pushes the stock decisively above that level than if there weren’t a lot of open interest at that strike expiring today.
Conversely, it can (and probably will) actually lead to more pinning — the tendency for stocks to close around strikes where there’s a ton of open interest, levels where, loosely speaking, options sellers win and options buyers lose.
If I’ve learned anything over the past few years, it’s that Say’s Law — the idea that supply creates it own demand — actually holds when it comes to speculative activities, whether that’s short-term options, sports betting, or prediction markets.
Or, more precisely, supply and regulatory loosening enable latent demand to be realized.
For instance, the addition of zero days to expiry index options to Robinhood’s trading platform last year contributed significantly to the growth in volumes for these instruments.
(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)
