A stock option usually begins trading about eight months before its expiration date. The exception is LEAPS or long-term options, discussed below. However, as a result of the sequential nature of the expiration cycles, some options have a life of only one to two months. A stock option trades on one of three expiration cycles. At any given time, an option can be bought or sold with one of four expiration dates as designated in the expiration cycle tables which can be found in the Appendix. The expiration date is the last day an option exists. For listed stock options, this is the Saturday following the third.
