Contract Roll Over is a special and different kind of trading day, and futures day traders should be aware that the market will act differently.

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OPEX brings many new risks to speculative traders that most other trading days do not.
Simply put it is 1 of 4 days of the year (actually 3 days of 12 as the effects of roll over tend to last for 3 days) when all the larger institutional traders Must come to the market and adjust their positions.
On every other trading day the institutional traders can chose to trade or not trade, however on roll over / OPEX this is not the case. As contracts will expire and cease to exist, they therefore must adjust, or "Roll" their contracts forward into new contract months.

In addition, knowing that the institutions will be present and active, there exists a group of traders who specifically take advantage of this dynamic. They are called Spreaders.
A spreader will take a position in both the back month and front month, (the outgoing and incoming contract) in order to scalp or play the spread between the two.
Spread trading requires a very specific skill set and is not for the average day trader or fain of heart.

The 3 days leading ip to OPEX day (3rd Friday), will act differently than most other trading days, and the reasons why have just been explained above. The influence of large institutional trading coupled with spread traders makes navigating the landscape more challenging than other trading days.

Keep in mind that for futures traders the effect of OPEX witll hit the market on the Tuesday  or Wednesday prior to the Friday Expiration. Even though the actual contracts will expire on the 3rd Friday of the month, the institutions must plan ahead for this, and that means the 2 sided effect of OPEX will be seen a few days earlier.

For more information on trading futures contract rollover see this post

The emini S&P September future contract rolled over yesterday to the December ESZ9 contract.  As typical of roll over, the market price action was very choppy but we did make contract highs continuing to push to multi-month highs. 

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