Home › Market News › Understanding Rollover and Calendar Spreads – The Coach’s Playbook
Before we get started, we’d like to give a quick shout out to the 2,000 Topstep traders that made it through Step 2 of the Trading Combine to earn Funded Accounts in 2020! We’re not even halfway through the year, and we’ve already blown away last year’s totals. It’s never too late to get started, there’s plenty of opportunity in the markets right now.
When futures contracts near their expiration date, traders with open positions have to make a choice whether to close out their positions entirely, or roll them into a new contract month. This process is known as “Rollover”, and it happens in every futures market.
Rollover indicates that the front month is expiring, and traders need to “roll” their positions to the next month. Markets tend to act differently during roll week because the focus of institutional traders is to reposition their trades as best they can. This means traditional trading methods kind of go out the window, because it’s all about rolling as cheap as possible.
When it comes to order execution for rollover, you have 2 options; you can either use a calendar spread or a leg spread.
Calendar spreads represent the difference in price between the front month and the back months. Because of the way these are quoted and traded, calendar spreads are an easier method for rolling a position.
Your other option is to “Leg” the spread, which simply means closing out the position in the front month and reopening it in the next month. Risk grows exponentially when you try legging spreads, simply because the markets move and you could end up chasing a bad price.
How To Know When The Roll Is Coming:
Remember to stay up-to-date on the products you’re trading!
Trade Well!
