What OPEX is
OPEX is short for Options Expiration. The 3rd Friday of every month, the monthly options on stocks and ETFs expire. After Friday's close, those contracts are settled and gone forever.
Quad-Witching happens 4 times a year (March, June, September, December). That is when monthly options PLUS index futures PLUS single-stock futures all expire together. Way more dollar volume than a regular OPEX, typically 3 to 4 times more.
Why it moves markets
Market makers (the firms on the other side of every option trade) have to stay hedged. They own or short the underlying stock as a counterweight to the options they have sold. As long as the options exist, they keep hedging.
When the options expire Friday afternoon, the hedge requirement disappears. The market makers unwind their stock positions. That is mechanical flow nobody on the screen sees coming, and it can cause big moves Friday afternoon and the following Monday.
What JHEQX is
JHEQX is a $20 billion plus fund from JPMorgan called the Hedged Equity Fund. Every quarter (end of March, June, September, December) it resets a big options strategy on SPX:
Buys a put spread (downside protection), and sells a call (caps the upside, pays for the puts).
This is one of the largest predictable options flows in the S&P market. The dealers on the other side have known hedging obligations for the full quarter. The strikes JHEQX uses become 'magnets' because dealer hedging pressure clusters around them.
How to read the OPEX card
Outside OPEX week, the card sits collapsed. You see one line: 'Next OPEX in 12 days, $84.2B SPX notional rolling off.' That number is the total dollar value of options about to expire. Bigger means more mechanical flow on Friday afternoon.
During OPEX week (the 5 days leading up to Friday), the card auto-promotes to the top of the Overview tab with an 'OPEX Week' badge.
When expanded you see:
Countdown header: 'OPEX Friday in 3 days.' The number ticks down live on your screen so it does not say 'tomorrow' past midnight.
Notional stacked bar: per-ticker dollar value of calls vs puts expiring. Tells you which ticker has the biggest mechanical flow coming.
JHEQX Collar (SPX only, Pro): the current quarter's strikes. If the data is more than 75 days old, you see a 'stale' badge instead of just showing the levels. If the data file is missing entirely, you see 'JHEQX data unavailable, check deploy.' Two distinct states so you know which problem is which.
Pre/Post GEX projection (OPEX week, Pro): shows the dealer's net gamma before and after the OPEX expiry. The charm sparkline next to it shows how dealer delta drifts day by day until expiration.
What to actually do
Two practical takeaways.
1. Trade lighter into OPEX week. Less of the usual mean-reversion. Moves can run farther than expected because the dealer hedging that normally damps them is rolling off.
2. Watch JHEQX strikes if you trade SPX. The put strike acts like support. The call strike acts like resistance. Not magic, but real for the duration of the quarter.
Holiday adjustment
When the 3rd Friday is a federal holiday (like Juneteenth on Friday June 19, 2026), the market is closed and OPEX shifts to the prior Thursday. The card auto-detects this and shows the correct settlement date.