How can I permanently prevent option positions from being exercised?

Spread positions can have unique expiration risks associated with them. In the case of U.S. securities options, the OCC will automatically exercise option contracts at expiration only if the option is In-the-Money by $0.01 or greater. If both legs of your expiring option spread are In-the-Money, then the long leg will be auto exercised by the OCC and the short may be assigned. It is possible that a short expiring option leg that finishes In-the-Money is lapsed by the owner and you will not be assigned. For non-U.S. options, please refer to the…

If a long stock option or index option finishes Out of the Money it will not be auto exercised by the Option Clearing Corp (OCC) and the long option will expire worthless. For non-U.S. options, please refer to the Options Exercise page of our website for information on how the different clearinghouses will handle the exercise…

If a long option is not in-the-money by at least $0.01 at expiration it will not be automatically exercised by OCC. If it is in-the-money by at least that amount and you do not wish to have it exercised, you would need to provide IBKR with contrary instructions to let the option lapse. These instructions would need to be entered through the TWS Option Exercise window prior to the deadline as …

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…