The "daily Call" From Option Alpha: Options Trading | Stock Options | Stock Trading | Trading Online

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again at optionalpha.com. Welcome back to the daily call. Today, we are going to be talking about quadruple witching, what it is and should you pay attention to it. Quadruple witching which is honestly the craziest term that options traders could’ve come up with, but I guess it makes sense for what it basically means and that is it refers to the third Friday of every March, June, September and December, basically the ends of quarters every year. And so, on these days, what ends up happening is you get four different styles of contracts that basically expire on the same Friday. That's why they call it the quadruple witching and more often, they refer to it as quadruple witching hour which is the last hour of these trading days, 3:00 to 4:00 Eastern Standard Time that generally sees that increase in volatility. But on these four days during the year, these four end of the quarter expiration days, you get market index futures, market index options, stock options and stock futures