What happens when I am assigned stock at option expiration?

When you sell an option, you provided the purchaser with the right to exercise which they generally will do if the option is in-the-money at expiration. While it is unlikely that holders of in-the-money long options will elect to let the option lapse without exercising them, certain holders may do so due to transaction costs or risk considerations. You can not force an assignment of your short option on the owner of the long option. Always review your position overnight as expiration stock and index option closing transactions will be in your…

Any short American Style option can be assigned before it stops trading. Option assignments are a double random lottery, so you could get assigned on one or all of the open short American style options in your account before the short option expires. The earliest you would see an assignment to the account is after the IBKR system overnight refresh is completed sometime between midnight and 2 AM EST. Option assignments are processed overnight and…

If the short call leg of a covered write position is assigned, the long stock position will be applied to satisfy the stock delivery obligation on the short call. The price at which that long stock position will be closed out is equal to the short call option strike price…

No. There is no provision for issuing conditional exercise instructions to the OCC. The OCC determines the assignment of options based upon a random process which is initiated only after the deadline for submitting all exercise instructions has ended. In order to avoid the delivery of a long or short underlying stock position when only the short leg of an option spread is in-the-money at expiration, the account holder would need to either close out that short position or consider exercising an at-the-money long option…