Market Shutdown Guide for Options

Lots of conjecture around the market shutting down, what happens to open option positions. Tos directed me to this guide (remove the quote marks and copy/paste the link):

“https://www.theocc.com/components/docs/about/publications/unscheduled-market-closings-guide.pdf”

It used to be that the option owner would have to provide execution instructions, but now OCC executes every option that is ITM at expiration. I’ve had an issue with collars, where at the last minute the protective put drops ITM, gets assigned—taking my long stock away, and I’m left with naked short calls. So on my collar positions I’ve been trying to spread the short calls with something, anything, cheap to protect against that scenario on a surprise shutdown with ITM puts ready to expire.

It’s also important to be aware of how spreads will be affected on market shutdown if the stock price is between the spread strikes at shutdown (with looming expiration), it could cause execution/assignment of one leg leaving a potential dangerous situation.

So the way I read this is that on a shutdown, the options that expire during the shutdown will be assigned based on the last regular traded price of the stock before shut down. So….let’s say you have a AMZN Call Credit Spread, short 1800 long 1810, and the last traded price of the stock is 1805…..you WILL end up short 100 shares of AMZN at 1800, the 1810 will expire. This is quite dangerous with no ability to manage.