CBOE extends options trading hours for select stocks to 7:30 AM ET starting Monday

Starting Monday, August 17, early risers on Wall Street get a new reason to set their alarms. The Cboe Options Exchange will begin offering pre-market trading sessions for select single-stock equity options at 7:30 a.m. ET, a full two hours before the traditional opening bell.

It’s the first time a US options exchange has allowed single-stock equity options to trade outside the standard 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET window.

What’s actually changing

Cboe’s new structure adds two sessions to the trading day. The morning Global Trading Hours (GTH) session runs from 7:30 a.m. to 9:25 a.m. ET, with order acceptance starting at 7:15 a.m. ET. After the regular session closes at 4:00 p.m. ET, a brief 15-minute “curb session” extends trading to 4:15 p.m. ET.

The lineup at launch covers roughly 20 of the most actively traded names on the market. All seven members of the so-called Magnificent 7 are included: Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Meta Platforms, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet. The roster also features AMD and Palantir, among others.

The road to launch

The SEC approved Cboe’s proposal on May 28, 2026, after a review process that pushed the original July 13 target date back by more than a month.

Why this matters for traders

The practical impact centers on one thing: timing. Options traders have long faced an awkward gap between when market-moving information hits and when they can actually act on it with options contracts. If Nvidia drops guidance in a pre-market press release at 8:00 a.m. ET, equity traders could already adjust their stock positions. Options traders had to wait until 9:30 and hope their intended trade still made sense at whatever price the market had already moved to.

That gap created a structural disadvantage for options-based strategies, particularly hedging. Portfolio managers holding large equity positions who rely on options for downside protection essentially had a 90-minute blind spot every morning where they could watch their stocks move but couldn’t adjust their hedges. That window just got significantly smaller.

Institutional traders may benefit most in the near term. The 7:30 a.m. start aligns with European market hours, which could appeal to global funds managing cross-border portfolios. A London-based trader hedging US tech exposure no longer needs to wait until 2:30 p.m. local time to put on an options position.

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