Witching Hour

See: Triple Witching. See: Option Expiration.

While Happy Hour is full of free-flowing alcohol and happy, lazy, buzzed peeps, witching hour is full of trading frenzy. Every third Friday of the month, options and futures contracts on stocks and indexes expire. The last hour of every third Friday is called witching hour, when everyone is trading last minute before their contracts expire. It’s the hour Cinderella is running to her carriage before it turns into a pumpkin again.

Unlike Cinderella, though, life goes on and contracts are renewed to expire at a later date if agreed upon.

There’s also “triple witching,” which only happens on the third Fridays of March, June, September, and December when stock options, index futures options, and index futures all expire on the same day (rather than being staggered, like a drunkard). Like the Weird Sisters or Three Witches of Macbeth, triple witching shows us not only external forces that control us weakly humans, but also the darkness and depravity of the human soul for those who are dark enough to play with options contracts.