Blackout Dates and Specific Dates: excluding events, importing days

1. Overview

Two calendars determine on which days an options strategy opens trades. "Specific Dates" holds the days on which the strategy trades. "Blackout Dates" holds the days on which it opens no trades even though Daily or Weekly is selected. Where to find both calendars and how they work together with Daily and Weekly is described in Strategy Activation & Trading Days.

This article shows two ways to avoid clicking each day: excluding whole event types and importing days from a file.

2. Excluding event types

Below the Blackout Dates calendar, the "Event Types" section lists three event types:

• FOMC Decision Day: the day the US Federal Reserve announces its rate decision (the second day of the two-day meeting).
• Triple Witching: the quarterly expiration in March, June, September and December.
• Monthly Options Expiration: the monthly expiration on the third Friday. If that Friday is a market holiday, the preceding trading day applies.

A tick excludes every day of that type, including those in the coming years. Nobody has to maintain a list: OptionsApp calculates the expiration days itself and takes the FOMC dates from the calendar published by the Federal Reserve. Below the ticks, OptionsApp shows how far the dates reach ("Dates available until").

The days of the selected event types are marked in the calendar in their own colour. Hovering over such a day shows which event type it comes from. It cannot be deselected individually; to remove it, untick the event type. Individually picked days and event types apply together, and "Confirm" saves both.

3. Importing days from a file

If a list already exists, for example from a backtest or from your own Excel sheet, the days can be imported into either calendar:

1. Click "Blackout Dates" or "Specific Dates" in the strategy. The calendar opens.
2. Click "Import CSV" at the bottom and select the file.
3. The days from the file are marked in the calendar. Below it, a short line says what was imported, for example "12 days added. Not a date: line 3."
4. Click "Confirm" to save. Only then do the days apply to the strategy.

The days from the file are added to the days already selected; nothing is replaced or deleted. An imported day can be removed with a click in the calendar like any other day.

4. File format

The simplest format is a list in one line: all days separated by commas, in the format year-month-day.

2026-10-28,2026-11-04,2026-12-09,2026-12-18,2027-01-27

If such a list only exists as text, paste it into an empty text file and save it as .csv or .txt.

A table with one day per line, as saved by Excel, works just as well. A header row and descriptions do not get in the way:

Date;Event
28.10.2026;Rate decision
04.11.2026;Labour market data
18.12.2026;Quarterly expiration

The rules:

• Separators are comma, semicolon or tab. Several days in one line are allowed.
• Dates are written as 2026-12-15 or 15.12.2026. A time after the date is ignored. Dates with slashes only work when they are unambiguous: 15/12/2026 works, 03/04/2026 does not (4 March in the US, 3 April in Europe).
• A header row, columns without a date and lines starting with # are skipped.
• Duplicate days count once, past days are not imported.
• A line without a readable date is left out. The line below the calendar names its number so it can be found in the file.
• If the file has an OPEN_DATETIME column, as some signal files do, only the days from that column are imported.

Sample files to try:

5. Good to know

• Blackout Dates are available while Daily or Weekly is selected. Event types and the import are available for options strategies.
• The FOMC dates reach as far as the Federal Reserve has published them. New dates arrive with an OptionsApp update.
• In an empty "Specific Dates" calendar, today is preselected. It stays marked after the import and can be removed with a click if it does not belong.
• OptionsApp does not check whether an imported day is a trading day. A day on a holiday or weekend simply has no effect.
• Before clicking "Confirm", briefly check in the calendar that the right days are marked.