Don’t Trade Option Expiration Days: Take the Three Day Weekend

OPEX is short for option expiration. Standard monthly options on stocks, ETFs and the S&P 500 index expire on the third Friday of each month. Four times a year, in March, June, September and December, it lines up with the quarterly futures and index option expiration too. Traders call that one quadruple witching. It is OPEX with the volume turned up.

Why does an options date matter to a futures trader? Because the biggest players in the market hold options. As those contracts approach expiration, the big institutions buy and sell ES futures to square up their positions. That buying and selling has nothing to do with support and resistance. It has to do with strike prices and expiring contracts. Price gets pinned near big strikes, then lurches when a big position gets closed out. Strong Levels that held all month get poked through and reclaimed in the same ten minutes.

Do the “same day options trading” crowd change this? They make it worse. Zero-day options expire every single day now, but the monthly expiration still stacks the largest open interest on one Friday. That is the day the tape gets squirly, to use George’s word for it.

Our Core Strategy is built on price bouncing at key levels. We trade the bounces. Our Battle Plan is built on price reacting at high probability reaction zones. We trade those reactions. Both our Core Strategy levels and Battle Plan levels perform beautifully in rational price action. OPEX is not rational price action. Price comes into a level, and instead of reacting the way it does the other 19 days of the month, it gets pushed around by expiring contracts that have nothing to do with the level at all.

Here is what the day tends to look like in the futures trading room. The open is fast and then goes dead. Price sits in a 10 to 15 point range for an hour, chopping through the Bull Bear Line three or four times. A clean-looking flush and reclaim triggers, runs 4 points, and reverses. Your 6 point stop gets hit by a wick that was never about your level. Then at 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon the real move finally shows up, and it goes 30 points in one direction with no pullback to get in.

Every one of those behaviors is a trap for a rules trader:

• Pinning: Price magnetizes to a big strike and refuses to leave. Bounces have no follow-through, so targets are never reached.
• False breaks: The big players push price through a level, then it snaps back. The reclaim you were waiting for looks perfect and fails anyway.
• Late day violence: The rush to close positions into the close produces the kind of 15 point candles that signal irrational price action, and irrational price action is where stops get eaten.

Can a skilled trader make money on that? Sometimes. But our point is that you do not have to. There are roughly 20 trading days in a month. Giving up one, maybe two, costs you nothing, and it protects the week you already banked.

George puts it plainly: “We like taking easy trades. An option expiration is anything but easy.” That is the whole argument in two sentences. The system is built to harvest the easy bounce at a Strong Level. When the day removes the easy bounce, the day removes the reason to trade.

Most traders who know about OPEX still get caught on Thursday. The positioning does not start at 9:30 Friday morning. It starts the day before, as the big players reduce exposure ahead of expiration. George has watched enough Thursdays before OPEX to put them in the same bucket as the Friday itself.

That is why the rule is a three day weekend, and why the Thursday gets handled under Friday rules. What are Friday rules? Reduced size, one good trade, and a hard stop on the session the moment you are green. George explains them fully in never give your week back on Friday. On the Thursday before OPEX, that is the minimum. Full Stand Down is the better choice.

Sometimes the calendar stacks the risk even higher. In March 2025 the Thursday before OPEX was also the day after an FOMC decision. Two reasons to stay out landed on one date.

Notice what George did there. He did not say “let’s see how it goes.” He named the condition before the open and set the rule for the day. That is the Battle Plan mindset applied to the calendar. The decision gets made when you are calm, so you never have to make it while a trade is going against you.

A rule you have to remember is a rule you will break. Put OPEX on the calendar in advance and the discipline takes care of itself. Here is the routine we teach.

1. Mark every third Friday for the year: Sit down once, open your calendar, and block every third Friday of the month. Mark the Thursday before it as a Friday rules day. The quarterly dates in March, June, September and December get an extra flag. Twelve Fridays, twelve Thursdays, done in ten minutes.
2. Write it in the journal before the week starts: George wants you to mark special days in your journal so the note is waiting for you Monday morning. When you review the month later, you will see how those days actually traded and the rule will stop feeling like a sacrifice.
3. Plan the three day weekend: Thursday close is your week’s close. Do your end of day charts, book the week, and leave. Go to the gym. Take the family somewhere. A trader who is rested Monday beats a trader who fought the tape Friday and lost.
4. Handle the exceptions honestly: If a holiday moves expiration to a Thursday, the rule moves with it. If you must trade, apply Friday rules: MES only, one contract, one trade, and FLAT as a TRADE the moment you are green.
5. Read the Battle Plan: Every Battle Plan flags OPEX, FOMC, CPI and the other special days before they arrive. Read the latest Battle Plan the evening before, and the Stand Down call is already written down for you. You never have to spot the date yourself.
6. Attend the A.M. Briefings on YouTube: George walks the day’s conditions live before the open on the MicrosTrader YouTube channel. When the third Friday is coming, you will hear it named out loud, along with the plan for it. Show up, listen, and let the room keep you honest.

Some months it will feel like you missed something. Price will trend cleanly and you will watch it from the sidelines. Let it go. There is always another high probability trade around the corner, and Monday’s tape is a far better place to find it.

New traders spend all of their study time on entries. George asks a different question in every single live session, and it takes only a minute: should you be trading at all today? OPEX is one item on a longer list of days that deserve a second look.

Our answer for a developing trader is yes. Avoid all of them until your results on normal days are consistent. Here is how the calendar risk stacks up.

The FOMC, CPI and NFP days get their own treatment in the Level 10 trading conditions lesson. What ties all of them together is a single idea: a day trading system only works on days the system fits. A trader who trades 200 days a year with a 60 percent win rate beats a trader who trades 250 days with a 52 percent win rate. The 50 days you skip are where most of the difference lives.

Does that mean you never look at the chart on OPEX? Watching is fine. Sit in the live trading room, mark the levels, note where price pinned and where it broke. You will learn how the day behaves without paying tuition for it. And when George asks the room his standing question, you will already have the answer.

The right answer, most months, is one word. Flat. Take the three day weekend, and go into Monday a winner.