Trading outside regular market hours (Use Ext. Hours Orders)

1. Overview

The Use Ext. Hours Orders option in the trade template allows OptionsApp to act outside regular trading hours (RTH). Without it, the app confines itself to the regular trading hours of the instrument concerned.

What is possible outside trading hours depends on the instrument, not on OptionsApp. Trading hours, permitted order types and the way a stop is triggered are set by the exchange and by the broker. Particular product groups are therefore subject to special rules, and those rules can change. OptionsApp queries them from the broker and offers in the trade template only what is permitted for the contract selected.

From version 2.0 on, this option additionally requires an approval in the user portal, see section 7.

2. Two Types of Instrument

What happens outside regular trading hours depends on whether the instrument has delimited regular trading hours at all.

• Instruments with clearly delimited regular trading hours, options on SPX or on shares for instance. Outside those hours, manual opening is possible, as are orders that stay active there. No time-driven or condition-driven opening takes place. Sections 3 to 5 describe this case.
• Instruments without delimited regular trading hours, options on the ES future for instance. For these, the exchange has no regular trading hours in the usual sense, but an almost continuous session with a daily break and no trading at the weekend. Here OptionsApp also carries out time-driven openings, exit checks and the fallback to a market order throughout the entire session. Each of these checks is preceded by a check of the data quality; without reliable market data the check does not take place. Details: Options on the ES Future.

3. Entry Outside Regular Trading Hours

For instruments with delimited regular trading hours, an automated entry is possible only during those hours. Outside them, only 0-DTE trades can be opened manually. Note that spreads outside regular trading hours are often considerably wider. A limit order may therefore not be executed even though the condition is met in theory.

4. Exit Outside Regular Trading Hours

For instruments with delimited regular trading hours, special rules apply to exits outside those hours. Regular market orders and stop orders are not executed there. The reason lies in the spreads: since they can be very wide outside regular trading hours, a market order would be executed at unfavorable prices.

Instead, you can use REL Orders. These can also be used in Extended Hours if the offset is set sufficiently large. The offset should be deliberately generous to accurately reflect actual market conditions in Extended Hours and to ensure execution.

However, a drawback is that REL Orders cannot be applied to Combos, only to individual Legs. This means that in Extended Hours, you can generally only place stops on individual Legs.

Exit options such as Early Exit or Delta Exit are not available outside regular trading hours for instruments with delimited trading hours, and neither are general Exit Conditions. The trade template therefore offers only the exit types that are actually effective for the contract selected. Checks that rely on figures of the underlying, delta-based exits for instance, are carried out only when the data required for them is available.

5. Profit Target Outside Regular Trading Hours

There's a special case for Profit Target regarding Extended Hours. Here you can separately set the checkbox Activate on ext. hours for the Profit Order:

If the "Use Ext. Hours Orders" option in the Trade Template is disabled but a Profit Target is set with "Activate on ext. hours" checked, then only the Limit Order of the Profit Target is active outside regular trading hours.

6. Price of the Underlying Outside Trading Hours

Outside regular trading hours, no reliable price is available for many underlyings. In such a case OptionsApp estimates the price from options data using a model and uses it to search for contracts.

The contract selected may therefore differ from the one that would have been selected on the basis of the actual price.

7. Approval Required

From version 2.0 on, trading outside regular trading hours requires an approval in the user portal. It is listed there in the Approvals area under "Orders outside regular trading hours".

Without this approval, OptionsApp confines itself to the regular trading hours of the instrument concerned. This shows as early as saving the trade template: the Use Ext. Hours Orders setting remains selectable, but the template cannot be saved, and the message names the missing approval.

A trade is governed by the state of the approvals at the time it was opened. An approval granted or withdrawn later does not affect running trades.

The confirmation text in the approval dialog reads:

I authorize OptionsApp to act outside regular trading hours and, for instruments without delimited regular trading hours, to open, to run exit checks and to close on a time-driven basis as well. I am aware that an estimated price of the underlying is used there, that not every order type is effective and that for individual instruments certain closing mechanisms do not trigger there.

Further details: Approvals in the User Portal.

8. Notes for Users

Trading outside regular trading hours requires special caution. For instruments with delimited regular trading hours, market orders and standard stop orders are not available in the pre- and after-market sessions. Anyone trading there should deliberately work with REL orders and sufficiently large offsets, and make sure that profit targets are actually activated through the corresponding setting. Which exit types are actually effective for a contract is shown by the trade template: it offers only those.