what is witching and why is it quadruple 
in folklore the late night witching hour was a time of supernatural and occult doings the appropriation of witching to denote the simultaneous expiration of stock and index options and futures contracts was meant to suggest the possibility of surprising market moves driven by the increased trading volumes associated with such quarterly events in practice single stock futures had minimal market impact given the prevalence of stock options since single stock futures no longer trade in the u s the quarterly derivatives expiration date is now often called triple witching 