After recently alluding to a 24-hour time frame, the CBOE has made it official, announcing on Tuesday that it will extend CBOE Volatility Index??(VIX??Index) futures trading hours to nearly 24 hours a day, five days a week, beginning Sunday, June 22. The news came by CBOE Holdings Chief Executive officer Edward T. Tilly at the 30th?annual CBOE Risk Management Conference (RMC) in Bonita Springs, Florida.
Pending regulatory review, the VIX futures trading week at CFE will begin on Sundays at 5:00 p.m. CT and end on Friday at 3:15 p.m. CT. CFE will close for 15 minutes between 3:15 p.m. CT and 3:30 p.m. CT on Monday through Thursday, when no trading will be transacted. The new trading day on those days will then begin at 3:30 p.m. CT.
Tilly said of the news in a press release, “VIX has become a recognized proxy for global market volatility. Now VIX futures customers around the world — including investment banks, proprietary trading firms, hedge funds, CTAs and issuers of exchange traded products ? will have the ability to trade VIX futures virtually around the clock and to react immediately to events affecting global markets. We have been very encouraged by the incremental volume and diverse number of users now trading VIX futures outside of regular U.S. trading hours.”
According to CBOE, through February of this year, just under eight percent of the VIX futures average daily has been transacted outside of regular U.S. trading hours. Throughout the?last few years, CFE has been extending these hours in an effort to accommodate customer requests for longer trading sessions outside of regular U.S. trading hours. The most recent change came last October and November, when CFE added five hours, 45 minutes to the VIX futures trading day.