What Time Do Options Start Trading?

Options start trading at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, the same minute US stocks open. Four index products trade overnight ahead of that, and exchanges begin taking orders for the regular session at 7:30 a.m., although an order sitting in that early window is queued rather than filled. The morning half of the options clock has four marks: order acceptance at 7:30 a.m., an overnight session that stops at 9:25 a.m., a five minute gap, and the 9:30 a.m. open.

What time do options start trading?

Regular options trading begins at 9:30 a.m. ET. That holds for every listed US option, whether the underlying is a single stock, an ETF or an index. Cboe Options Exchange, the venue that lists SPX and VIX options, publishes its session schedule in Eastern Time. Read on August 26, 2026, the morning rows are:

Begin GTH Order Acceptance (SPX, VIX, XSP, RUT), 8:00 p.m.
Global Trading Hours (SPX, VIX, XSP, RUT), 8:15 p.m. to 9:25 a.m.
Begin RTH Order Acceptance, 7:30 a.m.
Regular Trading Hours (RTH), 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m.

Source: Cboe Options Exchange, Hours & Holidays, read August 26, 2026.

RTH is the exchange shorthand for regular trading hours, the ordinary session. GTH is global trading hours, the overnight session. The underlying stock market keeps its own clock, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET, which our stock market hours guide walks through session by session.

What can an order do during the 7:30 a.m. acceptance window?

Order acceptance is not trading. From 7:30 a.m. ET the exchange takes orders for the regular session and holds them in a queuing book. An order in that book rests. It can be cancelled or replaced. It cannot match. Cboe's own documentation puts it plainly for symbols with no extended session: an early order rests until the regular open at 9:30 a.m. ET.

At 9:30 the queued orders feed the opening process, a single matching event that prints the first trade in each option series at one price. A limit order entered at 7:45 a.m. shows no fill for nearly two hours, then fills at the bell.

Two things follow from that. A price shown on a broker screen at 8:00 a.m. is an indication rather than a live two sided market an order can hit. And the 7:30 a.m. figure is an exchange rule, not a broker rule: individual brokers set their own earliest entry time, and some do not forward options orders ahead of the open at all.

Which options trade overnight, and when does that session stop?

Four Cboe index products trade through the night: SPX, the S&P 500 index option; XSP, the mini S&P 500 index option; VIX, the volatility index option; and RUT, the Russell 2000 index option. Their global trading hours session runs from 8:15 p.m. to 9:25 a.m. ET, with order acceptance for it opening at 8:00 p.m. Nothing else on the US options tape trades in those hours. A trader in Tokyo watching the S&P 500 at 10 p.m. New York time is looking at that same order book, a view we take apart in trading 0DTE options from Japan.

The overnight session stops at 9:25 a.m., five minutes ahead of the regular open. Those five minutes are not a trading session. Orders resting in the overnight book at 9:25 join the regular session queue and take part in the 9:30 opening process. The gap gives the exchange a clean handover between two books.

What does the tape look like in the first thirty minutes?

Session rules describe what is permitted. The tape shows what prints. The panel below sorts every US listed option contract that traded into Eastern time half hours, over the ten calendar days ending two sessions back, and reports each bucket's share of total contract volume.

WITH
    tape AS
    (
        SELECT
            intDiv(
                toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) * 60
              + toMinute(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')), 30) * 30 AS bucket_minute,
            sum(volume)                                                          AS contracts
        FROM global_markets.options_minute_aggs
        WHERE window_start >= today() - 12
          AND window_start <  today() - 2
        GROUP BY bucket_minute
    ),
    shares AS
    (
        SELECT
            bucket_minute,
            contracts,
            round(100 * contracts / sum(contracts) OVER (), 2) AS share_pct
        FROM tape
    )
SELECT
    formatDateTime(toDateTime('2026-01-01 00:00:00') + grid.bucket_minute * 60, '%H:%i') AS et_time,
    round(ifNull(s.contracts, 0) / 1000000, 2)                                           AS contracts_millions,
    ifNull(s.share_pct, 0)                                                               AS share_pct
FROM
(
    SELECT 420 + 30 * arrayJoin(range(21)) AS bucket_minute
) AS grid
LEFT JOIN shares AS s ON s.bucket_minute = grid.bucket_minute
ORDER BY grid.bucket_minute

The 07:00 half hour carries 0% of the volume in the sample, the overnight index session running out its last hours. The half hour beginning 09:30 carries 13.32%, or 33.43 million contracts across the sample. That step is the open. The buckets after 16:00 belong to the index close and the curb session, which what time options stop trading covers in full.

Zooming in on one liquid name sharpens the boundary. SPY, the S&P 500 ETF, carries one of the busiest options books in the market and has no overnight session. This panel walks minute by minute from 09:15 to 10:00 ET, reporting the average contracts printed per session in each minute alongside the share of sampled sessions in which that minute printed anything at all.

WITH tape AS
(
    SELECT
        toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) * 60
      + toMinute(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'))              AS minute_of_day,
        countDistinct(toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'))) AS days_traded,
        sum(volume)                                                         AS contracts
    FROM global_markets.options_minute_aggs
    WHERE startsWith(ticker, 'O:SPY')
      AND length(ticker) = 20
      AND window_start >= today() - 12
      AND window_start <  today() - 2
    GROUP BY minute_of_day
)
SELECT
    formatDateTime(toDateTime('2026-01-01 00:00:00') + grid.minute_of_day * 60, '%H:%i')         AS et_time,
    toUInt64(round(ifNull(t.contracts, 0) / greatest((SELECT max(days_traded) FROM tape), 1)))   AS contract_volume,
    round(100 * ifNull(t.days_traded, 0) / greatest((SELECT max(days_traded) FROM tape), 1), 1)  AS active_pct
FROM
(
    SELECT 555 + arrayJoin(range(46)) AS minute_of_day
) AS grid
LEFT JOIN tape AS t ON t.minute_of_day = grid.minute_of_day
ORDER BY grid.minute_of_day

At 09:15 the average is 0 contracts, and that minute printed in 0% of the sampled sessions. At 09:30 the average is 79450 contracts, printing in 100% of them. The distance between those two rows is the answer to the title question, measured rather than asserted. Quoted spreads behave differently in those first minutes than at any other point in the day, which is its own subject in why option spreads widen at the open.

Equity options, ETF options and index options

Every listed option opens at 9:30 a.m. ET. The close is where the products separate. Single stock and ETF options finish at 4:00 p.m. ET with the stock market. Cboe's proprietary index options run to 4:15 p.m. ET, the RTH end time on the session row quoted above, and SPX, XSP, VIX and RUT then have a curb session until 5:00 p.m. The close, the fifteen minute tail and the expiration day cutoff all live in what time options stop trading.

One change is pending on the morning side. Cboe has announced an expanded session for a list of single stock options, quoted in its schedule notice as global trading hours of 7:30 a.m. to 9:25 a.m. ET alongside regular hours of 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET. As of August 26, 2026 that schedule notice carries no effective date. Until one is announced, 9:30 a.m. remains the first minute a single stock option can trade.

Does a half day change the time options start trading?

No. A shortened session moves the close and leaves the open alone. On the half days around Thanksgiving and Christmas the market opens on the normal schedule and closes at 1:00 p.m. ET instead of 4:00 p.m. The exchange calendar carries both times for each shortened day.

SELECT
    formatDateTime(date, '%b %e')                                          AS holiday_label,
    any(name)                                                              AS holiday,
    formatDateTime(toTimeZone(any(open),  'America/New_York'), '%I:%i %p') AS scheduled_open_et,
    formatDateTime(toTimeZone(any(close), 'America/New_York'), '%I:%i %p') AS scheduled_close_et,
    round((toHour(toTimeZone(any(open),  'America/New_York')) * 60
         + toMinute(toTimeZone(any(open),  'America/New_York'))) / 60, 2)  AS open_hour_et,
    round((toHour(toTimeZone(any(close), 'America/New_York')) * 60
         + toMinute(toTimeZone(any(close), 'America/New_York'))) / 60, 2)  AS close_hour_et
FROM global_markets.stocks_market_holidays
WHERE date >= today()
  AND status = 'early-close'
GROUP BY date
ORDER BY date

Each of the 2 shortened sessions ahead opens at 09:30 AM ET and closes at 01:00 PM ET, starting with Thanksgiving on Nov 27. The opening bar is flat across every row while the closing bar drops. Full closures and the rest of the calendar sit in stock market holidays and early closes.

FAQ

What time do options start trading in the morning?

9:30 a.m. ET, for every listed US option. Exchanges begin accepting regular session orders at 7:30 a.m. ET, and those orders wait in a queue until the opening process at 9:30.

Can you trade options in the premarket?

Only four index products. SPX, XSP, VIX and RUT options trade on Cboe's overnight session from 8:15 p.m. to 9:25 a.m. ET. Single stock and ETF options have no premarket session as of August 26, 2026, and a premarket order in those names rests until 9:30 a.m.

Why do options start at 9:30 rather than earlier?

A listed option settles against the price of an underlying stock or index, and the regular session for those underlyings begins at 9:30 a.m. ET. The overnight index session is the exception, and it stops five minutes ahead of the regular open.

Do options open at 9:30 on a half day?

Yes. A shortened trading day moves the close to 1:00 p.m. ET and leaves the 9:30 a.m. open unchanged. The dates ahead are in the panel above and in our stock market holidays and early closes calendar.

What is the difference between order acceptance and trading?

Order acceptance means the exchange will hold an order in a queue. Trading means the order can match. Between 7:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. ET a regular session option order rests, and it can match only at the 9:30 opening process.

Every panel here ships with the SQL that produced it. Open one to see exactly how the clock buckets were counted, or ask the same question in plain English on the Strasmore terminal.