When will you support Index options?

Alpaca Products Discussion Alpaca Questions
1

HI,
When will you support trading SPX, XSP, and VIX options?

2

I had this question too and this is the reply I got from them::

This feature is currently on our roadmap; however, we do not have an estimated timeline for its release at this time.

We have recently launched Options Trading Level 3 and are actively working on expanding trading options further.

3

+1 this should indeed be a priority

4

Cant wait for SPX trading

5

@D_A Support for index options is an active project expected to be completed this year. Initially, there will be support for cash-settled index options SPX, SPXW, OEX, DJX, VIX, and XSP.

Last month included a few milestones, and there doesn’t seem to be any major roadblocks at the moment.

  • First test trade (~Mar 7)
  • Clearing validation (Mar 20)
  • Market data pipeline validation (Mar 26)
6

Thanks for the update Dan, this is great news. Any more detail on the timeframe, don’t need an exact date, but Q2, Q3 or Q4 would be great to know.

7

Dan, do you know if there will be any plans to support Portfolio Cross-Margining once index futures are introduced? Otherwise the capital efficiency benefits of shorting futures as a hedge cannot be achieved and large amount of cash needs to be reserved to cover the futures short positions in case of a drawdown, which could otherwise be offset by the long-side portfolio gains.

Below is the summary from AI on the current state of affairs:

How Alpaca Currently Structure Margin

  • Fixed Reg T Ratios: Alpaca enforces a strict 50% initial margin requirement for purchasing marginable equities and a 25% standard overnight maintenance margin.

  • No Dynamic Offsets: Under standard Reg T, long equity positions and short positions are evaluated as independent lines of risk. The system does not dynamically calculate risk correlations to slash your overall margin requirement just because one position hedges the other.

  • Buying Power Limits: They cap standard intraday buying power at exactly 4x (for Pattern Day Traders) and overnight buying power at exactly 2x your account equity. True portfolio margin systems regularly allow 6x to 10x leverage on highly hedged portfolios. [1, 2]

What This Means for Your Futures Roadmap

Because Alpaca does not offer true portfolio cross-margining today, when they do introduce futures, they will likely launch them in a separate sub-account structure (or an isolated risk segment) under Reg T guidelines. This means: [1]

  1. You would still face separate equity margin rules and futures margin rules.

  2. The cash generated by a long equity rally will not automatically clear the daily cash settlement loss on your short futures position in real-time. [1, 2]

8

What’s the latest? I’m very keen to trade SPX 0DTEs ASAP.

9

@Dan_Whitnable_Alpaca Is there any update on the Index Option progress. Also, any long-term outlook for trading Futures?

10

Bumping this up, @Dan_Whitnable_Alpaca could you provide any timelines by when these cash settled index options become available to trade on Alpaca?

11

@Helix

As of June 2026, index option trading is live for broker partner accounts but not for Alpaca retail accounts. They should be coming soon for retail accounts, but no specific date has been announced.

What’s included:

  • SPX (S&P 500)
  • XSP (Mini-SPX, 1/10 of SPX)
  • DJX (Dow Jones)
  • VIX

What’s coming next:

  • Global Trading Hours (GTH) support
  • More indexes
  • Market data for the indices

Key notes:

  • Index Options are charged a commission:
    $0.50 per contract
    CBOE exchange pass-through fees are also charged, which vary by symbol

  • These are cash-settled, European-style options

You can query the /v1/options/contracts endpoint to get the live tradable list, something like this:

https://paper-api.alpaca.markets/v2/options/contracts?underlying_symbols=SPX,XSP,DJX,VIX&style=european'
12

Yay! Thank you for adding index options!

I wanted to confirm whether the restrictions on 0DTE options still apply to index options. Specifically:

  • Cannot enter position after 3:30 PM
  • Force liquidation at 3:45 PM in some cases

Since index options are cash-settled, I would expect these restrictions to be lifted?

Also, is data for the underlying index (e.g. SPX) available?

13

@08.fortes.waxen Apologies here, I updated my previous post to state that index options are not yet available for retail accounts, but should be soon. All of your questions about entering positions and liquidation, as well as data for indexes, are still being resolved. The options team is still working out some of the final details.

14

@Dan_Whitnable_Alpaca

and T-Bills when this product will be available for Trading API.