Trading hours vary by instrument, even at one broker

[Fairman]

Trading hours vary by instrument, even at one broker

Most pairs trade from Sunday evening to Friday evening. But the exceptions are numerous. Gold may have a daily break. Indices stop for the night. Some exotics close early on Fridays. Crypto pairs trade on weekends on some brokers and not others.

Each instrument has its own schedule, shown in the contract specification. Holiday schedules differ again, and some are published only a few days ahead.

Positions held across unexpected closures can face gaps. Pending orders may not trigger as expected. Margin requirements sometimes change at session boundaries.

For scalpers moving between instruments, the schedule is part of the cost analysis. A pair that is closed for one hour a day, right when volatility picks up, may be unsuitable.

A quick table of trading hours for each instrument traded, updated at each holiday, saves surprises.

Which instruments traded have breaks or early closes that have caught the account off guard?

[Fairman]

Currency pairs on most brokers trade from Sunday evening to Friday evening with a short daily break at rollover, but other instruments follow different schedules. Gold and silver often have a daily pause of about an hour. Index CFDs follow the hours of their underlying futures or cash markets, with breaks between sessions and different holiday schedules. Energy contracts have their own pauses. Crypto CFDs may trade every day, including weekends, though with their own maintenance windows. All of these hours are set in server time and can change around daylight saving transitions, which shifts them relative to local time for traders in regions that do not change their clocks, such as Lagos.

[Amanhasnoname]

I keep a small table pinned next to my monitor with the hours of every instrument I trade, and it has saved me more than once. The first time was with gold, which paused for an hour at a time I had assumed was liquid. I had a pending buy sitting there, the market reopened with a gap of about 90 cents, and the order filled well off my planned price.

The daylight saving shifts are the other trap. Twice a year my broker's server time moves relative to my local time, and for two weeks in spring I was an hour out on my London open routine until I noticed the spreads were wrong.

Indices were the worst for holidays. A US holiday shortened the session on a German index CFD by several hours and my EA kept trying to open trades into a thin, wide book. Now I update the table each time the broker posts a holiday notice and I switch the EA off for any instrument with irregular hours.