On a standard brokerage platform, the furthest out you can buy an option is roughly 39 months, through contracts called LEAPS. Institutional traders can go further using FLEX options, which allow expirations up to 15 years from the trade date. On the other end, some contracts now expire the same day they’re traded. How far out you can buy options depends on the underlying asset, the exchange, and the contract type, but for almost every retail trader, LEAPS are the ceiling.
LEAPS Are the Longest Standard Contracts
Long-Term Equity Anticipation Securities, or LEAPS, are the most distant contracts you’ll find on a regular option chain. They can extend up to 39 months from their initial listing date, and they always carry a January expiration.1Cboe Global Markets. Equity LEAPS Options Product Specifications
Not every stock has LEAPS available. The exchange picks underlying securities based on trading volume, share price, and other liquidity criteria, so you’ll find them on large, actively traded names but not on thinly traded small-caps. New LEAPS series are generally added once a year, and the Cboe adds new strike prices after substantial market moves.1Cboe Global Markets. Equity LEAPS Options Product Specifications
As a LEAPS contract gets closer to expiration and falls within the normal option cycle window, it loses its LEAPS designation and becomes a regular option. The only practical effect is a ticker symbol change. The contract terms stay the same.
LEAPS are popular for investors who want equity exposure without committing the full capital needed to buy shares outright. Buying a deep-in-the-money LEAPS call, for instance, can behave somewhat like owning the stock while tying up far less cash. Even so, the contract still has an expiration date and will lose value over time regardless of how the stock performs.
FLEX Options Go Out to 15 Years
If 39 months isn’t long enough, FLEX options allow expiration dates up to 15 years from the trade date.2Cboe Global Markets. FLEX Options – Customized Tools for Portfolio Management These are exchange-listed contracts on the Cboe, but unlike standard options, the buyer and seller negotiate key terms including the strike price, exercise style, and exact expiration date. The exchange still clears and guarantees the trade, which separates FLEX options from purely over-the-counter derivatives.
FLEX options are available on major stock indexes, ETFs, and individual equities. In practice they are used almost exclusively by institutional investors and insurance companies hedging long-term liabilities like indexed annuity products.2Cboe Global Markets. FLEX Options – Customized Tools for Portfolio Management Most retail brokerage platforms don’t offer a FLEX option order entry screen, so if you’re trading through a standard online broker, treat LEAPS as your practical ceiling.
What’s Available Between: Monthlies and Weeklys
Below LEAPS, standard options follow a three-cycle system. Every optionable stock is assigned to a January, February, or March cycle. A stock on the January cycle will have contracts expiring in the current month, the next month, and the next two months falling in that cycle (January, April, July, October). The February cycle uses February, May, August, and November. The March cycle uses March, June, September, and December.
In practice, you’ll always see at least the current month and the following month available, regardless of which cycle the stock sits on. Monthly options expire on the third Friday of their expiration month. Between standard monthlies and LEAPS, most stocks will have somewhere between four and eight expiration dates available at any given time.
The shortest-dated options are weeklys, which typically list new series with about one to five weeks until expiration. Major indexes and heavily traded stocks now offer expirations on multiple days of the week. SPX options expire every trading day, while popular equities like Apple, Amazon, and Tesla have expirations on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.3Cboe Global Markets. Available Weeklys
This daily availability gave rise to zero-days-to-expiration trading, commonly called 0DTE. These are simply options bought and sold on their expiration day. Cboe expanded SPX to daily expirations in 2022, and the format grew quickly with both retail and institutional traders. The appeal is lower premium cost and high leverage. The risk is that a position expiring in hours has almost no room to recover from an adverse move, and time decay is at its most aggressive.
How the Expiration Range Changes by Asset Class
The type of asset underneath the contract determines how many expiration dates are available and how far out they stretch.
- Individual equity options follow the standard monthly cycles plus LEAPS where available. Highly liquid stocks also have weekly expirations. The maximum is roughly 39 months for LEAPS.
- Index options tend to have much broader expiration calendars. Major indexes like the S&P 500 offer daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and long-dated expirations. Index LEAPS can expire in December, January, or June, unlike equity LEAPS, which are January only.
- ETF options fall somewhere in between. Popular ETFs like SPY have extensive weekly expirations, while smaller ETFs may only have standard monthly dates.
Settlement style also differs, which matters if you’re comparing a long-dated index option with an ETF option on the same underlying index. All equity and ETF options settle by physically delivering shares when exercised. If you hold an in-the-money call on a stock at expiration, you receive 100 shares. Index options are cash-settled instead. You receive or pay the difference between the strike price and the index value in cash, with no shares changing hands.4Cboe Global Markets. Why Option Settlement Style Matters
What to Know Before Buying a Far-Dated Contract
Spreads Get Wider the Further Out You Go
The further out you go on the expiration calendar, the less trading activity you’ll typically find. LEAPS contracts routinely have wider bid-ask spreads than their shorter-dated counterparts on the same stock. That spread is a real cost. If a LEAPS call has a $5.00 bid and a $5.40 ask, you’re giving up $0.40 per share just to get into and out of the position. On a 100-share contract, that’s $40 in friction before the trade has moved in your favor.
Limit orders are essential at this end of the chain. Market orders on thinly traded LEAPS can fill at surprisingly bad prices. Set a limit between the bid and ask, and be prepared to wait. Spreads are widest on LEAPS for smaller-cap stocks with less option activity. On a household-name stock the spread will be tighter, though still wider than what you’d see on a front-month contract.
Time Decay Isn’t Linear
Every option loses value as it approaches expiration, a phenomenon measured by theta. For LEAPS buyers, the key point is that time decay is not linear. A contract with 18 months left loses time value slowly, almost imperceptibly on a daily basis. As expiration approaches, the decay accelerates. The last 90 days are where the erosion gets aggressive, and the final 30 days can be brutal.
That curve works in the LEAPS buyer’s favor early on, since you’re paying for time value that isn’t decaying quickly. It also means that if the stock hasn’t moved in your direction after a year, you’ll start feeling the drag much more as the remaining time premium bleeds away.
Finding the Furthest Date on Your Platform
Pull up the option chain for the ticker symbol, and scroll through the available expiration dates listed across the top or side of the screen. The last date in the list is your maximum. For stocks with LEAPS, you’ll see January expirations one, two, and sometimes nearly three years out. If only monthly dates appear, that stock doesn’t have LEAPS listed. Most major brokerages charge around $0.65 per contract for options trades, with no separate per-trade commission. If you’re trading in a margin account, the minimum equity requirement is generally $2,000.5FINRA. Rule 431 – Margin Requirements