The Weekly, Weekly Monday, Weekly Wednesday and End Of Month /ES options are European Style exercisable only on expiration day. The Quarterly /ES Options (December expired last Friday) are American Style options which can be exercised until 6:30 p.m. ET on any business day the option is traded.
European options which are in-the-money on the last day of trading are automatically exercised. A 4:00 p.m. ET price fixing based on the weighted average traded price fixing (symbol ESF) of the E-mini S&P 500 futures in the last 30 seconds of trading on expiration day (3:59:30 p.m.-4:00:00 p.m. ET) will be used to determine which options are in-the-money. Contrarian instructions are prohibited.
An American option exercise results in a position in the underlying cash-settled futures contract. In-the-money options, in the absence of contrarian instructions delivered to the Clearing House by 6:30 p.m. ET on the day of expiration, are automatically exercised into expiring cash-settled futures, which settle to the SOQ calculated the morning of the 3rd Friday of the contract month.
Please read the CME's E-MINI S&P 500 OPTIONS - CONTRACT SPECS at the following website;
https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/eq....html?optionProductId=138#optionProductId=138