What Happens When a Monday or Wednesday Stock Option Expires?

As of October 2026, a Monday or Wednesday stock option expires at the close of business on its expiration date and follows the same exercise process as a Friday weekly. An option that is in the money by OCC's threshold is exercised automatically unless the holder instructs otherwise by 5:30 p.m. ET, and the shares change hands one business day later. Under the T+1 settlement cycle in force since May 28, 2024, that means shares from a Monday expiration are delivered on Tuesday and shares from a Wednesday expiration on Thursday.

What happens when a Monday or Wednesday stock option expires?

Monday and Wednesday series are Short Term Option Series, the same exchange program that lists ordinary Friday weeklies. In BOX Exchange's filing with the SEC, the series expire at the close of business on their date and are P.M.-settled, so the option trades through that day's regular session and then expires. Which tickers have these series, and how the list changes each quarter, is covered in hi2morrow's guide to which stocks and ETFs have Monday and Wednesday options.

What follows the close is the standard equity option expiration. Options that finish in the money are exercised through an automatic procedure, the holder has until 5:30 p.m. ET to change that outcome, and the stock side of every exercise settles through the clearing system on the next business day. Nothing in FINRA's rule distinguishes Monday or Wednesday from any other expiration day. What differs from a Friday weekly is the calendar: a Friday exercise settles on Monday, while a Monday exercise settles on Tuesday and a Wednesday exercise on Thursday.

Is an in-the-money option exercised automatically on a Monday or Wednesday expiration?

Yes, in most cases. FINRA Rule 2360 subjects expiring standardized equity options to the Exercise-by-Exception procedure, usually shortened to Ex-by-Ex, under The Options Clearing Corporation's Rule 805. A holder can rely on it by doing nothing, or can submit a Contrary Exercise Advice to override it in either direction, either asking not to exercise an option that is in the money or asking to exercise one that is not.

The test compares the strike with the price of the underlying stock at the close, which the rule describes by reference to OCC as normally the last sale price in the primary market. OCC also sets how far in the money an option must be. In a filing approved on January 16, 2008, OCC lowered that threshold from $0.05 to $0.01 for equity options. Whether $0.01 is still the current figure is not something that filing can tell you, so check the current OCC rule or your firm's expiration notice before relying on a particular cutoff.

What is the exercise cut-off for Monday and Wednesday options?

The holder's cut-off is 5:30 p.m. ET on the business day of expiration, and FINRA's rule says members may not accept exercise instructions after that time. A broker can set an earlier deadline for its own customers, so the time shown in your platform may come sooner than 5:30. For customer accounts, the member firm itself has until 7:30 p.m. ET to submit a Contrary Exercise Advice, but that is a deadline for the firm and not an extension for you.

Monday and Wednesday expirations did have their own, earlier clearing deadline in OCC's records. In its January 2024 filing on the move to T+1, OCC described the deadline for clearing members to submit exercise notices at expiration as 6:30 p.m. CT, or 7:30 p.m. ET, on Monday and Wednesday expirations, against 7:00 p.m. CT on weekly Friday expirations and 8:00 p.m. CT on monthly standard Friday expirations. Those are deadlines between clearing firms and OCC as of January 2024, and they are separate from the customer cut-off above. How these deadlines interact with the new extended sessions for options, including trading in expiring series after 4:00 p.m., is a separate topic that depends on each exchange's launch.

What happens if you sold the option and are assigned?

When a holder exercises, OCC passes the obligation to a clearing firm with a short position in the same series, and the firm allocates it to a customer account. A seller of a call who is assigned must deliver 100 shares per contract at the strike price, and a seller of a put who is assigned must buy 100 shares at the strike price. This can happen even when the option closed slightly out of the money, because a holder can submit a Contrary Exercise Advice up to the cut-off and exercise anyway.

The practical consequence is that a short Monday or Wednesday option is not finished when the market closes. Assignment is processed after the close, and your broker reports it in your account, so a seller should expect that a position can change overnight. Margin consequences of assignment depend on the account and are discussed in the broker's margin rules, not in the expiration rules.

When do you get the shares after a Monday or Wednesday expiration?

Exercised stock options settle one business day after the exercise. OCC's rules previously set delivery on the second business day after an exercise notice, and the SEC's March 8, 2024 order approved OCC's change to the first business day, to be implemented by May 28, 2024, the compliance date of the SEC's move to T+1 for most broker-dealer transactions. The same order removed late exercise, because the compressed T+1 timeline left no room for it.

Take a hypothetical stock, ABC, a Qualifying Security. Trader A holds one ABC call with a $200 strike expiring Monday, October 19, 2026, and Trader B has sold one ABC put with a $195 strike for the same date. ABC's last sale on its primary market is $200.40, so the call is $0.40 in the money and is exercised automatically unless A files a do-not-exercise instruction before 5:30 p.m. ET, while the put is out of the money and expires unexercised unless its holder submits a Contrary Exercise Advice. If the call is exercised, A pays 100 × $200, or $20,000, and receives 100 ABC shares on Tuesday, October 20, 2026. The same positions expiring on Wednesday, October 21, 2026 would settle on Thursday, October 22.

What changes on holidays and bank-only holidays?

Holidays change the expiration date first and the delivery date second. Under BOX's Rule 100(a)(66), as described in the same filing, a Monday series that falls on a market holiday expires on the next business day, while a Wednesday series expires on the business day before. For Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Monday, January 18, 2027, the Monday series would therefore expire on Tuesday, January 19, the cut-off would be 5:30 p.m. ET that Tuesday, and the shares would settle on Wednesday, January 20. If the exchange lists a Wednesday series on a holiday date, it expires on the Tuesday before, with settlement on the next business day after that. For the full closure calendar, see hi2morrow's guide to stock market holidays, early closes, and settlement dates.

Bank-only holidays are a different case, because the exchanges stay open while settlement does not. FINRA's margin extension schedule lists Veterans Day, Wednesday, November 11, 2026, as a bank holiday with securities exchanges open and no settlement. A Wednesday series that expires on November 11 trades and expires normally, and under T+1 its shares settle on Thursday, November 12 as usual. The effect shows up one day earlier in the week: a Tuesday series on a Tier 1 ETF expiring on November 10 would normally settle on Wednesday, but because nothing settles on November 11, those shares also arrive on November 12. Hi2morrow's guide to whether stock sale proceeds settle after a Friday or a holiday explains the same calendar for ordinary stock trades.

Alexander Styopin's professional view: the expiration-day clock is the part traders most often misjudge, not the exercise itself. Because Monday and Wednesday series settle on the next business day, an assignment on a short call can leave you short shares in an account for a night when you planned the position to be gone, and a holiday or a bank-only day moves that date without any change to the option. The cleaner habit is to read the settlement date off the calendar when you open the position, and to treat any threshold or deadline that is not in your own broker's current documentation as unconfirmed.

Educational material only. Not investment or legal advice. Option exercise, assignment, and settlement rules can vary by broker, account type, and jurisdiction.

Author: Alexander Styopin, hi2morrow analyst and economist with 25 years of experience in the US stock market