Cboe has asked the SEC to approve a notable change to listed equity options market structure: letting a limited set of highly active, multi-listed equity option classes trade in a morning session from 7:30 a.m. to 9:25 a.m. ET (Global Trading Hours, or “GTH”), plus a short 4:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. ET “Curb” session after the cash close.
Two framing points matter for traders reading headlines:
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This is a proposal, not a done deal. As of May 23, 2026, the SEC process is still in the proposal/proceedings stage, with a published decision deadline of May 31, 2026.
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“More hours” is not the real story. The real story is how those hours work: session-tagged orders, a single book spanning sessions, no market orders in the extended sessions, and extended-hours prints that may not behave like the “last sale” you are used to seeing during the regular session.
This article is for general information and options education only. It is not financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or a trade recommendation. Options trading involves risk and is not suitable for all investors. See the site’s Risk Disclosure.
What Cboe is proposing (plain-English version)
Under the amended filing, Cboe would be allowed to designate up to 100 multi-listed equity option classes for extended-hours trading if they meet eligibility thresholds based on recent trading activity and underlying size/liquidity.
In the proposal’s current form, the eligibility screen is based on the preceding six calendar months and includes:
- Average daily option volume of 150,000 contracts per day (for the class),
- Underlying issuer market capitalization of at least $50 billion,
- Underlying average daily share volume of at least 10 million shares.
If a class is designated for the morning GTH session, it would also be eligible for the 4:00-4:15 p.m. Curb session.
Cboe also describes a “living list” approach:
- The exchange would review eligibility semiannually.
- It would publish updated lists by exchange notice.
- Newly designated names could begin trading on the first trading day of February and August after those reviews.
Removal is also not instantaneous. The amended filing describes a generally gradual removal path (often within 18 months for names that fall out of eligibility), plus the ability to accelerate removal in certain circumstances (for example: very limited activity, broader discretionary changes with notice, or immediate action for investor protection / fair and orderly market concerns).
How the sessions would work (mechanics that affect your fills)
This part is where self-directed traders should focus, because it is the difference between “a symbol is tradable” and “this is a market you can actually use responsibly.”
Separate sessions, but a single book
Cboe describes keeping separate trading sessions so participants can control whether an order is eligible in extended hours, while maintaining a single book across all trading sessions.
In the amended description, the core session eligibility logic is:
- All Sessions orders can remain actionable across sessions.
- RTH-Only orders are not actionable during GTH or Curb.
- RTH and Curb orders are actionable during regular hours and the 4:00-4:15 p.m. Curb window.
If your broker exposes these tags (or maps them behind the scenes), they will matter. A “set-and-forget” limit order intended for the next day’s open can become actionable earlier than you expect if you are not careful with session eligibility.
No market orders in extended hours
One of the clearest guardrails in the proposal is that users would not be able to submit market orders in equity options during GTH or Curb.
That is not a small detail. It is an implicit admission that market quality is expected to be structurally different outside regular hours: thinner participation, wider spreads, and more frequent situations where an unbounded “pay whatever” instruction is dangerous.
Morning opening process vs. Curb
For the morning session, Cboe says it would replicate the current multi-list opening process, including:
- A queuing period beginning at 7:15 a.m. ET, and
- Opening auction updates beginning at 7:15 a.m. ET, with an opening rotation intended to mirror the existing regular-session equity-options process.
By contrast, the amended filing says the Opening Auction Process is not applicable to the 4:00-4:15 p.m. Curb session. That difference alone should shape expectations: the Curb window is not simply “regular hours, but later.”
Routing and linkage
The proposal also discusses routing behavior and linkage protections. In simplified terms: the exchange describes extending routing availability from “market open to market close” inclusive of sessions applicable to the product, while still preventing trade-throughs and locked/crossed markets under the existing Linkage Plan framework. If other options exchanges operated in overlapping extended windows, the exchange describes routing to them in a similar way to how routing works during regular hours.
OPRA prints: familiar lines, different meaning
Many traders anchor their judgment to “last price” and to vendor-provided open/high/low/close stats. Extended-hours options trading can break those instincts.
The amended proposal highlights a subtle combination:
- Quotes and trade data for the proposed equity-option GTH and Curb sessions would use existing OPRA regular-session lines for distribution.
- But trades from these sessions would not be last-sale eligible and would not count toward daily high/low prices.
If your platform shows extended-hours prints, do not assume:
- that a print is the “official last” for that option series,
- that it updates the day’s high/low,
- or that it carries the same informational weight as a regular-session last sale.
Operationally, this matters because it can change how you interpret:
- A single print far from the displayed market,
- A sudden “IV spike” derived from one thin print,
- A chain that appears “active” but is not consistently two-sided.
What does not change: settlement anchors and exercise/assignment conventions
It is easy to conflate “the option can trade later” with “the official close moved.”
The amended filing states that, for settlement and in/out-of-the-money determinations, OCC would still use the 4:00 p.m. NBBO and the 4:00 p.m. underlying close (i.e., the conventional reference points tied to the regular session close), even if a 4:00-4:15 p.m. Curb market exists.
This is also a good moment to separate two distinct risks:
- Execution/mark risk (wider spreads, harder-to-interpret prints, noisier implied volatility) can increase in extended hours.
- Exercise/assignment risk (OCC workflows and broker cutoffs) does not automatically change just because an options market is open a few minutes longer.
If you want a refresher on how assignment works and why “being short a contract” is not the same as being short a stock position, start here: Options expiration, assignment, and exercise explained.
Why This Matters For Options Traders
If approved, this proposal would likely change the rhythm of price discovery in some of the most liquid equity option names.
Here are the trader-relevant implications, with facts and interpretation kept separate.
Fact: earlier access to risk transfer around overnight news
A 7:30 a.m. ET session creates a window where options can trade before the 9:30 a.m. cash open. That matters around:
- Earnings releases and premarket guidance updates,
- Macro headlines and overnight geopolitical events,
- Pre-open index futures moves that change equity betas,
- Situations where traders want to hedge or reduce exposure before cash liquidity returns.
Fact: the market is expected to be structurally thinner
The exchange’s own disclosures (including disclosures it references for extended-hours environments) emphasize that extended sessions typically involve:
- lower trading levels,
- reduced liquidity and fewer participants,
- wider spreads,
- larger and more abrupt reactions to news.
Even if your broker lists a chain as “tradable,” you should expect the quality of that market to vary sharply by:
- strike proximity (ATM vs. wings),
- expiration (front week vs. far-dated),
- and whether the underlying itself is trading with healthy premarket liquidity.
Interpretation: chain-derived signals get noisier
Many retail workflows use chain snapshots for quick reads: “expected move” from an ATM straddle, skew shape as a sentiment proxy, or a quick IV comparison vs. yesterday. In thin markets, those can degrade because the inputs degrade.
If the proposal becomes operative, a practical mindset is:
- Treat premarket and post-close IV readings as indicative, not as clean consensus.
- Be skeptical of midpoints when bid/ask spreads are wide or size is minimal.
- Expect skew to look more “jagged” because market makers may quote selectively when hedging is harder.
This does not mean those prices are “fake.” It means your confidence interval should widen.
Practical (non-recommendation) playbook adjustments
Without making trade recommendations, there are a few execution habits that are simply more important in thinner sessions:
- Use limit orders, not “whatever it takes” logic.
- Verify session eligibility (RTH-only vs. all sessions vs. RTH+curb) so orders do not become active at unintended times.
- Watch for one-off prints and avoid treating them as definitive valuation.
- Sanity-check unusual chain/Greek readings with a second view (another platform tab, another data source, or simply waiting for more two-sided quoting).
If you want a general refresher on why option spreads matter more than most beginners expect, see: Options volume vs open interest: how to read market activity.
What Traders May Misunderstand
These are the misconceptions most likely to cause avoidable mistakes if extended hours equity options become available.
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“If it trades before 9:30 or after 4:00, it sets the official last price for the day.” Not in the way many traders assume. The proposal describes extended-hours trades that are not last-sale eligible and do not count toward daily high/low, even if they use familiar OPRA distribution lines.
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“Extended hours means I can just use market orders to get filled.” The amended filing explicitly says market orders would not be accepted in equity options during GTH or Curb.
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“More hours automatically means better liquidity.” More time is not the same as more participants. The exchange’s own extended-hours disclosures warn that liquidity is typically lower and spreads wider outside the regular session.
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“The 4:00-4:15 p.m. session changes the official close for exercise/assignment.” The filing describes keeping settlement and in/out-of-the-money reference points anchored to 4:00 p.m. (NBBO and underlying close), even if trades can occur after 4:00.
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“If I see a big IV jump at 8:10 a.m., that’s a reliable market signal.” Maybe, maybe not. In thin markets, a single print or a widened quote can distort derived IV/Greeks displays. Treat the signal as lower-confidence until the market becomes more two-sided.
What happens next (and what to watch)
For traders, there are two “next steps” that are more useful than guessing approval odds:
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Regulatory status and operative date. If the SEC approves the change, the amended filing describes not launching until at least 30 days after approval. The practical timing depends on the final order and exchange notices.
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Broker implementation details. Even if an exchange session exists, your experience depends on how your broker handles:
- session eligibility flags,
- order types allowed,
- chain display conventions for extended-hours prints,
- risk controls and cutoffs around expiration and corporate actions.
If you trade around earnings or large overnight gaps, the actionable question is not “is this bullish or bearish?” It is “how do I interpret prints, spreads, and derived metrics when the market is open but thinner?” That is a market-structure question, not a directional one.
Bottom line
Cboe’s proposed extended-hours sessions for select equity options are best understood as a market-structure expansion with different operating rules, not as “regular hours, but longer.”
If approved, the benefit is earlier access to hedging and risk transfer in the most liquid names. The cost is execution and interpretation complexity: wider spreads, fewer participants, and market-data prints that can look familiar while still behaving differently than regular-session last sales.
This article is for general information and options education only. It is not financial advice, investment advice, or trading advice. Options trading involves risk and is not suitable for all investors.
Sources
- SEC Release No. 34-105063 (procedural status; decision deadline):
https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/cboe/2026/34-105063.pdf - SEC Release No. 34-105153 (amended proposal text; sessions, mechanics, eligibility, and disclosures):
https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/cboe/2026/34-105153.pdf - SEC Release No. 34-104509 (order instituting proceedings; “novelty” and SEC scrutiny context):
https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/cboe/2025/34-104509.pdf - Cboe C1 Exchange Rule Book (useful for verifying what is operative vs. proposed):
https://cdn.cboe.com/resources/regulation/rule_book/C1_Exchange_Rule_Book.pdf - OPRA Pillar Output Specification (extended-hours trade messaging background):
https://cdn.opraplan.com/documents/OPRA_Pillar_Output_Specification.pdf
