Expiration-day checklist: positions, deadlines and funding

Plan expiration around actual contract trading hours, exercise deadlines and possible holdings. Confirm settlement before the next trade.

By OptionsKing. Publisher and editorial methods.

List every expiring leg and the shares or cash it could deliver. Choose acceptable outcomes before the final trading window, then verify fills and assignment notices. The schedule below is an example for the equity contracts used here; the broker and product specifications determine the real deadlines.

Thursday night: sort, do not decide

List everything expiring tomorrow and put each position in one of three buckets.

Comfortably out of the money. More than a couple of percent away, low delta, no dividend. These need nothing. They expire, you keep the credit, and you write again next week.

Comfortably in the money. You are being assigned. That was the deal, and on a covered call it is the good outcome: max profit, position closed. The only question is whether you would rather roll it out to keep the shares, and that question is about the shares, not the option.

Near the money. The hard ones, and usually one or two out of ten. Define this concretely rather than by feel: within about one percent of the strike, or a delta between roughly 0.35 and 0.65. On the worked position, UBER closed Thursday at $72.30 against a $72.50 strike with the call at delta 0.44. That is textbook near the money and it is where the whole checklist earns its keep.

Friday morning: place the easy ones early

Anything you have already decided to roll or close, do it in the morning. Liquidity on an expiring contract thins as the day goes on, spreads widen into the afternoon, and the worst fills of the week are printed in the last hour by people who waited.

Check the ex-dividend calendar for the next cycle while you are there. If you are rolling into a period that contains an ex-date, the assignment arithmetic changes and you may want a different strike.

3:00 p.m.: the near-the-money ones

An hour before the close, make the call on each of them. Three options and no fourth.

• Close it. Pay whatever the contract costs and take the certainty. On the worked position that was $39 on Thursday.
• Roll it. Buy back and sell a later expiry, usually further out and sometimes higher. Keeps the shares and keeps you paid.
• Let it ride. A legitimate choice, as long as it is a choice. You are accepting that Monday holds either 100 shares or $7,250 and you are fine with both.

What makes the third one legitimate is having priced both branches first. On the worked trade they were $140 apart, and the branch that felt like winning was the cheaper one.

4:00 p.m.: your part is over

Trading is done, so your options are done. OCC / Options Industry Council, Options Exercise FAQ keeps the exchange window for exercise notices open until 4:30 p.m. Central, and your broker's cutoff is earlier, but neither is yours. As the writer you have nothing to submit. The holder decides and OCC / Options Industry Council, Options Exercise FAQ allocates.

Do not watch the after-hours tape hoping. It changes nothing and it will keep you at the desk for an hour.

Saturday: read the notice

Check the account. Assignments post overnight, and this is where you find out which Monday you are having. It takes thirty seconds and it is the single most-skipped step on this page.

Monday: confirm, then act

Do not infer settled holdings from an unfilled closing order or a Friday moneyness label. Confirm execution, assignment, pending cash and share quantities. Only then determine what another call or put would obligate the account to deliver.

• Confirm what you hold. Shares, or cash where the shares were.
• Check buying power. Assignment moves it, sometimes by more than you expect if a put converted into a stock position.
• Expect the display to lag. SEC, New "T+1" Settlement Cycle: Investor Bulletin puts stock settlement one business day after the trade, so a Friday expiration settles Monday and the account can show pending cash and displayed shares at the same time for a few hours. That is normal.
• Then write the next one, against the position you actually have rather than the one you assumed.

The checklist, short version

• Thursday: sort everything into out, in, and near.
• Thursday: check next cycle's ex-dividend dates.
• Friday morning: execute the decided rolls and closes.
• 3:00 p.m.: close, roll or accept each near-the-money position. Price both branches first.
• 4:00 p.m.: stop.
• Saturday: read the assignment notices.
• Monday: confirm the position, check buying power, then trade.

Seven lines, most Fridays take four minutes, and the one Friday a year it matters it is worth considerably more than that.

The 30-second version

Common questions

Sources

• OCC / Options Industry Council, Options Exercise FAQ
• SEC, New "T+1" Settlement Cycle: Investor Bulletin
• OCC, Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options

Rules and thresholds above were checked against these documents on August 4, 2026. Exchange and broker rules change. Confirm anything you are about to act on with your own broker.

Keep reading

• The position this checklist exists for
• What happens after you stop
• What runs without you

Do the math on your own trade

• Assignment probability calculator delta to keep-odds, with the caveat that matters.
• Roll analyzer is rolling this position actually worth it.
• Covered call calculator premium, break-even, static and if-called return, annualized.

Every price in this article is an illustrative worked example, not a quote. Read Assignment and expiration for the rest of the series, and the disclaimer before you act on any of it. Selling options carries real risk of loss, and the loss can be far larger than the premium you collected.