What does 0DTE mean?

Any option becomes a 0DTE option on its last trading day, and traders use the term for positions opened and closed within that day. 1DTE means one day left, 7DTE a week, and so on. If calls, puts and strikes are new to you, start with options trading for beginners and call vs put.

An option's price, the premium, has two parts. Intrinsic value is how far the option is in the money: a $650 call with SPY at $652 has $2 of intrinsic value. Time value is everything above that, the price of the chance that the option gains more before it expires. On expiration day only hours of that chance remain, so time value is small, and by the close it is zero. An option that finishes out of the money expires worthless.

Which options have 0DTE expirations every day?

As of October 2026, these US options list an expiration on every trading day, Monday through Friday. Holidays change the schedule, so check the option chain.

  • SPX, options on the S&P 500 index itself. The daily contracts trade under the root symbol SPXW. Cboe added Tuesday and Thursday expirations in 2022 to the existing Monday, Wednesday and Friday ones.
  • XSP, Mini-SPX index options at one-tenth the size of SPX. Cboe completed their daily schedule in October 2022.
  • SPY, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, and QQQ, the Invesco QQQ Trust. Tuesday and Thursday expirations were added in November 2022, on top of Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
  • IWM, the iShares Russell 2000 ETF, which also lists Monday to Thursday expirations alongside its Friday weeklies.

Why are 0DTE options so popular?

On SPX alone, Cboe reports that 0DTE contracts averaged 2.3 million a day in 2025, about 59% of all SPX options volume. Single stocks with weekly options usually expire on Fridays, so their 0DTE day comes once a week; in January 2026 the SEC approved a rule letting one exchange add Monday and Wednesday expirations on some of the largest stocks. The pull of 0DTE comes from a few features, and each one has a cost:

  • A low price per contract. With little time value left, a near-the-money 0DTE option costs a fraction of a longer-dated one. The cost: the whole amount is at risk within hours.
  • Big percentage moves. A small move in the index can double a premium or halve it within minutes. The same leverage works against you.
  • No overnight position. If you close the option before the bell, news after the close cannot touch it. An SPY or QQQ option held through the close is different, as explained below.
  • Precision. Traders can hedge or take a view on one day's event, such as a CPI release or a Fed decision, without paying for weeks of time value.
  • An expiration every day. There is always a contract that ends today, which is exactly what makes overtrading easy.

How 0DTE options behave: gamma, theta and the final hours

Two Greeks dominate expiration day. Theta is time decay, the value an option loses as time passes, and it speeds up as expiration nears. A 0DTE option can shed a large share of its remaining time value in the last hour or two of the session even if the underlying does not move. Our options Greeks guide covers each one in more depth.

Gamma measures how fast delta changes. On the last day, an option near its strike has very high gamma: a move of a dollar or two in SPY can take a contract from almost worthless to several times its morning price, or the other way. That is why a 0DTE option's price chart can look like a cliff and a rocket on the same afternoon.

Implied volatility matters too. On a scheduled news day, premiums can be priced for a big move before the release and deflate right after it, even when price moves your way; see implied volatility. And bid-ask spreads are large relative to a small premium: a $0.05 spread on a $0.50 option is 10% of its price.

A hypothetical 0DTE SPY trade: how fast premium goes to zero

The numbers below are made up for illustration. Option prices come from a simple pricing model at 15% implied volatility; real quotes differ with spreads, volatility and demand. Say SPY is at $650.00 at 1:00 p.m. ET (8:00 p.m. Riyadh, 9:00 p.m. from November 1) and you buy one 0DTE $651 call for $1.20, which is $120 for a contract covering 100 shares. All $1.20 is time value, because the call is out of the money. To break even at expiration, SPY must close above $652.20, the strike plus the premium.

Here is what happens in three cases. Note that two of the three lose most or all of the premium, and the winner needed a fast, early move:

  • SPY goes nowhere and sits at $650.00. The call drops to about $0.90 at 2:00 p.m., $0.55 at 3:00, $0.30 at 3:30, a few cents near 3:55, and expires worthless at 4:00 p.m. ET. Loss: $120, 100% of the premium, without SPY moving against you at all.
  • SPY dips $2 to $648.00 by 2:30 p.m. The call falls to about $0.25. Loss: about $95, roughly 80%, in 90 minutes.
  • SPY rises $2.50 to $652.50 by 3:00 p.m. The call is worth about $1.90, a gain of about $70 if you sell then. Hold on and let SPY stay at $652.50, and at the close the call is worth only its $1.50 of intrinsic value: a $30 gain, less than half of what it showed an hour earlier.
  • The same idea on SPX costs roughly ten times as much per contract, because an SPX contract is about ten times the size of an SPY contract. XSP is one-tenth of SPX.

Turn your phone sideways to read the drawing. Tap to close.

A hand-drawn chart of the hypothetical 0DTE $651 call bought for $1.20 at 1:00 p.m. ET with SPY at $650.00: if SPY stays flat, the premium slides to zero by 4:00 p.m. (−$120); if SPY dips to $648, the call is worth about $0.25 at 2:30 (−$95); if SPY rises to $652.50, it is worth about $1.90 at 3:00 (+$70), or $1.50 if held to the close (+$30).

0DTE SPX vs 0DTE SPY: settlement, assignment and pin risk

SPX and XSP options are European-style and cash-settled. They can be exercised only at expiration, and an in-the-money contract simply pays the difference in cash, based on the S&P 500's closing value for the daily SPXW and XSP contracts, credited the next business day. No shares change hands and there is no early assignment. The full comparison is in SPX vs SPY options.

SPY and QQQ options are American-style and settle in shares; one contract covers 100 shares. An option that finishes in the money by $0.01 or more is exercised automatically by the OCC, the options clearinghouse, unless you instruct your broker otherwise. So a long call held through the close can become 100 SPY shares per contract, about $65,000 of ETF at a $650 price, and shares carry overnight risk. Some brokers restrict trading in expiring contracts or close them for you near the close if the account cannot carry the shares.

Pin risk is the uncertainty when SPY closes right next to a strike. Holders have until 5:30 p.m. ET to decide whether to exercise, and SPY keeps trading after the 4:00 p.m. close, so an option that looked worthless at the bell can still be exercised if price moves after hours. A seller can wake up with a share position they did not expect. The simple defense is to close 0DTE SPY positions before the close instead of holding them into expiration.

Turn your phone sideways to read the drawing. Tap to close.

A hand-drawn flow of what happens at expiration: SPX and XSP options are European-style and cash-settled, so an in-the-money contract pays cash the next business day, with no shares and no early assignment; SPY and QQQ options are American-style and settle in shares, so one in the money by $0.01 or more is exercised automatically into 100 shares per contract, about $65,000 at $650. Below: pin risk until 5:30 p.m. ET, and the simple defense of closing before the close.

What time do 0DTE options stop trading? New York and Riyadh time

Cutoffs differ by product. Riyadh times below are for US daylight time, which ends on November 1, 2026; after that, add one hour. Your broker may set an earlier cutoff for orders in expiring contracts, so check its rules too. Holidays and a live clock are on our US stock market hours page.

  • SPX daily contracts (SPXW): the expiring series stops trading at 4:00 p.m. ET, or 1:00 p.m. ET on a half-day session. That is 11:00 p.m. Riyadh time until November 1, then midnight. Non-expiring SPX options trade until 4:15 p.m. ET.
  • XSP: the expiring series also stops at 4:00 p.m. ET, 11:00 p.m. Riyadh (midnight from November 1).
  • SPY and QQQ: their options are on the exchanges' list of classes that trade until 4:15 p.m. ET, and Cboe notes that expiring ETF options trade until 4:15 p.m. as well. That is 11:15 p.m. Riyadh, or 12:15 a.m. from November 1. The ETF's regular session ends at 4:00 p.m., so those last 15 minutes trade against an underlying that is in after-hours trading.
  • Exercise decisions on SPY and QQQ options: until 5:30 p.m. ET under FINRA rules, which is 12:30 a.m. Riyadh after midnight, or 1:30 a.m. from November 1.
  • Standard monthly SPX options (root SPX, not SPXW) work differently: they are AM-settled, stop trading on the business day before expiration, usually a Thursday, and settle from the opening prices of the index stocks the next morning.

A 0DTE options strategy: a 5-minute SPY signal with a strict time stop

No 0DTE options strategy works every day. What you control is the plan: where the idea is wrong, where you take profit and how long you wait. One way to build it is to take the trigger from the chart of the underlying and treat the option only as the vehicle. This is scalping, holding for minutes up to an hour on 5-minute signals; more in our options scalping strategy guide.

An example with made-up numbers and the same pricing model as above: at 2:00 p.m. ET (9:00 p.m. Riyadh, 10:00 p.m. from November 1) a 5-minute candle closes and gives a long setup with entry $650.20, stop $649.60 and target $651.50, all levels on SPY. The trader picks a 0DTE $650 call at about $1.45, or $145. Strike, expiry and size are the trader's decisions; see how to choose a strike price.

  1. Size from the premium. Assume the whole $145 can be lost: a fast move, a wide spread or a missed exit can take all of it. If that is more than your risk per trade, the trade is too big, even at one contract. The position size calculator helps with the math.
  2. Exit on the underlying's stop. If SPY trades down to $649.60, sell the call at once. In the model it is worth about $1.05 by 2:15 p.m., a loss of about $40 before spreads.
  3. Exit on the underlying's target. If SPY reaches $651.50, sell. In the model the call is worth about $2.05 at 2:30 p.m., a gain of about $60.
  4. Use a time stop. If neither level is hit within 30 minutes, six 5-minute candles, close the trade. With SPY drifting at $650.30, the call is worth about $1.35 at 2:30 p.m., a $10 loss. Held to 3:30 p.m. with no move, it is worth about $0.80: almost half gone without the stop ever being hit.
  5. Be flat before the last 30 minutes. A hard rule such as no open 0DTE position after 3:30 p.m. ET (10:30 p.m. Riyadh, 11:30 p.m. from November 1) keeps you out of the steepest decay and away from exercise and pin risk.
  6. Never add to a losing 0DTE option or hold it hoping for a rebound. Time works against it every minute.

Where UpTickFlow fits in a 0DTE plan

UpTickFlow, our invite-only TradingView indicator, is one way to get that kind of trigger on SPY. It scores every setup from 0 to 100 and shows only A+ setups. Signals appear after the candle closes and do not repaint, and each comes with an entry, a stop and a target drawn on the chart before the trade. It stays quiet in choppy or abnormally volatile markets, in the first minutes after the open, in the midday lull and in the last 30 minutes.

It reads the SPY chart only. It does not read options data, choose strikes or expirations, or place trades, and it was not built or tested specifically for options. The contract, the size and the exit are your decisions, and time decay, wide spreads, gaps and the loss of the entire premium all remain real risks. The workflow is covered in how to trade options with TradingView, and the indicator itself on the UpTickFlow home page.

0DTE risk checklist

Run through these questions before every 0DTE trade:

  • Can I lose the whole premium without breaking my daily loss limit?
  • Do I know the exact last trading time for this contract, and my broker's cutoff?
  • Is there a scheduled release today, such as CPI, the jobs report or a Fed decision, and at what time?
  • Is the bid-ask spread small relative to the premium? A $0.10 spread on a $1.00 option can cost about 10% to get in and out.
  • Are my stop, target and time stop written down, as levels on the underlying and as a clock time?
  • Will I be flat before the close, so no SPY or QQQ option turns into shares overnight?
  • Am I trading because there is a setup, or because there is always a contract expiring today?