Stock market hours around the world

The full table of market hours

Official continuous-trading hours in each exchange's own local time. They exclude the opening and closing auctions and any extended-hours trading, which varies by broker.

Americas

Europe, Africa and the Middle East

Asia and the Pacific

Forex sessions

The currency market does not close during the week: it starts on Sunday afternoon in the Americas and ends on Friday afternoon in New York. The windows above describe when each centre contributes real volume, not when trading is possible.

Session overlaps: why some hours are worth more

An overlap is the stretch when two centres trade at the same time. The consequence is mechanical: more participants sit in the order book, the gap between bid and ask narrows, and a large order moves the price less. Trends tend to hold instead of dying after two candles.

• London · New York. Four solid hours when the two largest centres coincide. It is the highest-volume window of the day and where US economic data gets digested. If you can only watch the market once a day, watch here.
• Tokyo · London. A brief overlap of about an hour that usually breaks the tight ranges left behind by the Asian session as Europe steps in.
• Sydney · Tokyo. The start of the trading week. Contained liquidity and better respected ranges: territory for mean reversion rather than breakouts.

The opposite window is information too. Between the New York close and the Sydney open there is barely a market standing. Spreads widen, and a move that looks strong may be nothing more than an absence of counterparties.

Daylight saving shifts the opening bell

The gap between London and New York is not five hours all year round. The United States moves its clocks on the second Sunday in March and back on the first Sunday in November; the European Union does it on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October. For the two or three weeks in between, the Wall Street bell rings an hour earlier or later than usual on European clocks.

The same happens in reverse in the southern hemisphere: Sydney and Auckland enter daylight saving as Europe leaves it. And several major centres never change their clocks at all — Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai — so their distance from you moves twice a year even though they change nothing.

This is why the clock on this site stores each market's official timezone rather than a fixed offset. The conversion is recalculated on every load using the rules in force.

The Asian lunch breaks

Several Asian exchanges stop trading at midday and resume afterwards. This is not a minor curiosity: an order sent during the break waits for the reopening auction, with whatever price gap that implies.

• Tokyo: closed from 11:30 to 12:30 local time.
• Hong Kong: closed from 12:00 to 13:00.
• Shanghai and Shenzhen: closed from 11:30 to 13:00.
• Singapore: closed from 12:00 to 13:00.
• Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur: long breaks of two hours or more.

Seoul, Taipei and Mumbai, by contrast, run a continuous session. On the clock these breaks appear as real gaps in the market's bar.

2026 holidays at the major exchanges

A holiday does not always close the whole day: some are half sessions that end at lunchtime. These are the calendars loaded into the clock.

The remaining exchanges are shown with their ordinary hours, because their calendars depend on moving festivals — the lunar new year, the Islamic calendar — that are worth confirming at the source before you plan around them.

Futures, crypto and extended hours

Index futures on CME Globex trade from Sunday to Friday almost without a break, with a one-hour maintenance pause at the end of the Chicago afternoon. That is why the S&P 500 "moves" overnight while the New York exchange is shut: what is trading is the future.

Cryptocurrencies have no schedule at all — they trade seven days a week without interruption. Even so, their volume follows the pulse of the traditional centres, peaking during the Europe–US overlap and bottoming out on Saturday mornings.

Many brokers also offer pre-market and after-hours trading on US stocks. It is a thinner market: spreads widen and a mid-sized order can move the price several points. See what time the stock market opens for the exact windows.

A short glossary

Opening auction

The period before the session when orders accumulate without matching, until a single opening price is set.

Spread

The gap between the best bid and the best offer. It narrows when volume is present and widens when it is not.

Continuous session

The stretch where orders match immediately, between the opening and closing auctions.

Half day

A shortened session, common the day before a holiday, where the market closes at midday.

Overlap

A window in which two financial centres are trading simultaneously.