Strota / Weekly vs Monthly Expiry — NSE F&O Schedule

Weekly vs Monthly Expiry — NSE F&O Schedule

Four different weekly expiries, one monthly. Which day each index expires, why it matters, and the next dates on the calendar.

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NSE runs five different expiry cycles in parallel. Four indices have weekly expiries on four different days; everything also has a monthly expiry on the last day of the month.

Knowing which contract expires when is the price of admission for trading the weekly cycles efficiently. A trade placed Friday evening for next Monday's MIDCAP expiry is a different beast from a NIFTY Thursday weekly trade.

The four weekly expiries

MIDCAP NIFTY — Monday. Lowest-liquidity index option but the earliest weekly settlement.

FIN NIFTY — Tuesday. Mid-tier liquidity; differentiated from BANK NIFTY by including NBFCs, insurance, and asset managers.

BANK NIFTY — Wednesday. Highest-volatility index option; popular for both directional and short-premium trades.

NIFTY 50 — Thursday. Highest-volume index option in the world by contract count.

All four also have monthly contracts that expire on the same weekday in the last week of the month.

Monthly stock futures and options

Individual stock F&O contracts (RELIANCE futures, HDFC BANK options, etc.) only have monthly expiry. There are no weekly stock contracts on NSE.

Monthly stock contracts expire on the last Thursday of each month — same day as the NIFTY monthly contract. If the last Thursday is a market holiday, expiry shifts to the preceding trading day.

Strota tracks daily rollover percentage during the last week of each monthly cycle, so you can see how much OI is being carried forward into the next month.

Why the day-of-week matters

Each expiry day has its own personality. NIFTY Thursdays often coincide with US Fed announcements or major macro data — IV runs higher on those Thursdays. BANK NIFTY Wednesdays often have RBI policy spillover.

Monday MIDCAP expiries are sensitive to weekend news flow. Tuesday FIN NIFTY can be quiet unless there's banking sector news.

Pro traders often run multiple weekly positions in parallel — short premium on the Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday window across different indices, with no time decay overlap on the same underlying.

What to do with this: Build a weekly calendar of all four expiry days for the current week. Set position management alerts the day before each expiry — if you're holding any open positions, that's when you decide to roll, close, or let them settle. Forgetting expiry days produces the most-common F&O losses for retail traders.

Common misreads

Assuming all weekly options expire on Thursday like NIFTY. Each index has its own day.
Forgetting that monthly expiry coincides with the same weekday in the last week — so the last Thursday is BOTH a NIFTY weekly AND a NIFTY monthly expiry.
Holding stock F&O positions into Friday assuming Monday is still tradeable — Thursday monthly expiry means many stock contracts no longer exist by Friday morning.

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Key takeaways

MIDCAP NIFTY = Monday, FIN NIFTY = Tuesday, BANK NIFTY = Wednesday, NIFTY = Thursday.
Stock F&O is monthly-only, expiring last Thursday of each month.
Monthly index contracts expire on the same weekday as their weekly cycle in the last week of the month.
Holidays shift expiry to the preceding trading day — happens 2-3 times a year.
Each expiry day has distinct dynamics — IV regime, news sensitivity, position-unwind patterns.

Expiry-day questions

If I want to run short premium across the week, which day-of-week sequence makes sense?

Sell MIDCAP NIFTY weekly on Friday afternoon (expires Monday — 1 trading day of Theta), FIN NIFTY Monday (expires Tuesday), BANK NIFTY Tuesday (expires Wednesday), NIFTY Wednesday (expires Thursday). Four non-overlapping Theta harvests across four indices in one week.

On a holiday week, does the order of expiries shift?

Yes — every expiry day that falls on a market holiday shifts to the preceding trading day. So Maharashtra Day (May 1) on a Thursday means NIFTY weekly expiry moves to Wednesday April 30 — and BANK NIFTY's Wednesday expiry the same week shifts to Tuesday. Compounding shifts in holiday weeks compress two indices' expiries onto the same day.

Why does last-Thursday-of-the-month NIFTY have so much more OI than a normal weekly Thursday?

Because it's BOTH the weekly expiry AND the monthly expiry — monthly OI is roughly 5-10x weekly OI for NIFTY. So the last Thursday combines both into one settlement, which is why volume and gamma exposure peak on that day.

I hold a stock futures position — when do I have to deliver?

Stock futures are physically settled. If you're long futures into expiry on the last Thursday of the month, you'll receive delivery of the underlying shares and must have full margin for the share value (not just futures margin). Most retail traders close stock futures before expiry to avoid this.

Weekly options for individual stocks — when do they launch?

They don't exist on NSE currently. Only the four major indices have weekly options. Individual stock F&O remains monthly-only. SEBI has periodically discussed expanding weekly options but no rollout has been announced.