Extended-Hours Options Trading Launches on Select Stocks and ETFs: What Traders Need to Know

NYSE American Options launched extended trading hours this week for a select group of high-volume equity and ETF options. The new early session runs from 7:30 a.m. to 9:25 a.m. ET, and a late trading session runs from 4:00 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. ET. A pre-open window for order entry begins at 6:00 a.m. ET.

Cboe Options Exchange launched similar pre- and post-market sessions for options on the same day, covering 24 single stocks and 5 ETFs. NYSE American Options’ initial eligible list includes:

AAPL, AMD, AMZN, AVGO, BABA, BAC, F, GLD, GOOG, GOOGL, HOOD, INTC, IWM, META, MRVL, MSFT, MU, NFLX, NOK, NVDA, ORCL, PFE, PLTR, QQQ, SNDK, SPY, TSLA, TSM, and XLF.

tastytrade customers can trade options on these symbols in both the early and late sessions through Global Trading Hours.

The ETF options on the list (SPY, QQQ, IWM, GLD, and XLF) already trade until 4:15 p.m. as part of their regular session, so the new late session mainly extends single-stock options. All other NYSE American option classes keep their standard hours. On shortened trading days, the sessions shift: the early session still precedes the open, and the late session runs from 1:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. ET.

Why This Matters

The exchanges are responding to demand for more flexible access to U.S. options, particularly around earnings, news, and macroeconomic releases that land outside the 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET window. The early session gives active traders a chance to position or adjust before the open based on overnight developments or pre-market moves in the underlying.

This is not overnight trading. The late session is a 15-minute window, and the early session ends five minutes before the opening bell. Day-one volume was muted across the industry, which is typical until liquidity builds.

Practical Considerations

Extended sessions come with the usual lower-liquidity caveats:

• Bid-ask spreads tend to be wider.
• Thinner liquidity makes fills harder to get and slippage more likely.
• Limit orders are the practical choice; confirm with your broker whether other order types are accepted.
• Price discovery can be less reliable, and moves in the underlying don’t always carry cleanly into the options.

A trader’s broker must support routing and order entry for these sessions. Availability isn’t automatic just because the exchange is open.

These sessions are an incremental step, not a shift to around-the-clock options. Separately, NYSE and Cboe both plan to extend equities trading to 23 hours a day, five days a week, beginning December 6, subject to industry readiness.

How to Approach It

If you trade the eligible names and your platform offers access, treat the new hours like any other low-liquidity environment: consider sizing smaller than you would in regular hours, use limit orders, and set your risk parameters before you enter. The early session can help you react to news instead of waiting for the open, but wider spreads and thinner markets raise the cost of being wrong or needing to exit quickly.

Traders should check their broker’s support status, eligible symbols, and any session-specific order types or disclosures. tastytrade customers can find details on order types and session behavior in the Global Trading Hours article in the tastytrade Help Center. As with all options trading, defined risk and probability-aware position sizing remain the foundation, whether the clock says 8:00 a.m. or 2:00 p.m.

For traders who want to go deeper, tastylive, our media affiliate, will be closely following the concepts and strategies around these new trading hours, especially for binary events like earnings announcements and company releases that fall outside regular trading hours. If you’re interested in trading options during these extended sessions, tune in to tastylive.