Good info DAX
The monthly roll cycle starts Tuesday April 5th for Crude Oil with the 4-day rolling of USO positions, the USO is an exchange traded security meant to track movements in the WTI futures contract. This happens over a four day period now from the 5th-8th of April, so that traders cannot easily front-run the rollover process.
Rolling, Rolling, Rolling - USO, Brent & WTI
Nevertheless, obviously with the price of Crude rising, the USO has to sell a lot of front month longs in the May contract to rollover to the June contract. Based on the listed holdings as of Monday April 4,
- USO will roll over 8,400 WTI Crude Futures for the May contract on the ICE exchange,
- and also has to rollover 8,821 CL Crude Futures for the May contract on the Nymex exchange,
- and 2,000 Crd. Oil Fincl. Futures WS for May also on the Nymex exchange.
Next we have the Brent contract Rollover schedule which begins
- with options that expire on the 12th of April
- with the futures contract expiring on the 15th of April.
However, expect traders to position ahead of the actual expiration date as most traders will roll their Brent futures contracts sometime between the 8th and the 13th and for options the 8th through the 12th serves as a good rule of thumb.
For the WTI rollover we have options expiring on the 14th of April, and futures on the 19th of April, but again most of the rollover takes place prior to the last 2 days of the date of expiration. So expect most traders to rollover positions somewhere between the 12th through the 15th of April. For options activity it would be the 12th through the 14th.