A web site you might find useful is the Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation site (cdcc.ca). CDCC is the clearing corporation for all Canadian exchange-traded options. To obtain a list of all the options traded in Canada, go to the CDCC site and click on "Notice to Members", and then "1998". You will then be shown a list of all the notice to members CDCC has distributed this year. Scroll down the list until you find "CDCC Classes Listed as of ______". The most recent list on their site is as of December 1997. It is fourth from the bottom of the list of notices.
You will need Adobe Acrobat in order to read any of CDCC's notices. If you don't have Acrobat, you should be prompted with download instructions when you try to access a notice.
If you are able to retrieve the CDCC report you will see that it provides a list of all the options traded in Canada, option symbols, the exchange where the option trades, and the expiration cycle of the option. For those of you who are not familiar with the term expiration cycle, this refers to the contract months which are available for any given option.
As identified on the CDCC report, the following are all the cycles for Canadian equity options:
Cycle 1: January, April, July, October
Cycle 2: February, May, August, November
Cycle 3: March, June, September, December
Cycle 4: Three consecutive months plus the following months in the cycle indicated
Cycle 5: Two near months plus the next two months of the cycle indicated
The first option on CDCC's list is Abacan Resources Corporation, which is a cycle
5(1) option. So according to the cycles above, the contract months available for trading are the two near months, plus the next two months from cycle 1. So during April, the contract months available are April, May, July, October. After April expiration the months available will be May, June, July, October. |
