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The end of an era in options


Options traders might be about to draw a line under 25 years of confusion with the imminent completion of the Symbology switch-over on Friday February 12.

But there is unlikely to be much nostalgia for the soon to be obsolete Opra coding system which caused chaos and hampered development of the options industry.

Under the old system on trading screens, options contracts are limited to a maximum of five alpha characters. The first one to three of these identify the option and...

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