What are the regular US stock market hours?
The regular session, also called the core session, starts at 9:30 a.m. ET with an opening auction and ends at 4:00 p.m. ET with a closing auction. The NYSE and Nasdaq keep the same hours and the same holiday calendar.
ET means New York time: Eastern Daylight Time (EDT, UTC-4) from March to November, and Eastern Standard Time (EST, UTC-5) the rest of the year. On a New York clock the session never moves. On yours it can, if you live somewhere else.
This is the session that matters most for day traders. It has the deepest volume and the tightest spreads, and the daily candle on most charts is built from it.
- Regular session: 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET
- Trading days: Monday to Friday, except exchange holidays
What are pre-market and after-hours trading hours?
Extended-hours trading happens on electronic venues outside the core session. On NYSE Arca and Nasdaq, pre-market runs from 4:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. ET and after-hours from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET. Your broker decides your real access: some open pre-market only at 7:00 a.m. ET, and many accept only limit orders outside regular hours.
Liquidity is the catch. Say a stock closes at $50 and reports earnings at 4:05 p.m. After hours the quote might be $46.10 bid and $46.60 ask, with a few hundred shares on each side. Buy at the ask, sell at the bid, and you have lost 50 cents a share before the price moves at all. In regular hours, a liquid stock's spread is usually a cent or two.
An overnight session is planned. Nasdaq and NYSE Arca intend to add trading from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. ET starting December 6, 2026, with a pause from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m., subject to final regulatory approval. Some brokers already offer overnight trading in selected stocks through other venues, so ask yours what it actually supports.
- Pre-market: 4:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. ET (exchange window, check your broker)
- After-hours: 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET
- Planned overnight session: 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. ET from December 6, 2026, pending approval
How daylight saving time shifts the opening time
The US moves its clocks forward on the second Sunday of March and back on the first Sunday of November. The dates that matter for 2026 and early 2027 are in the list below.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain (UTC+3) and the UAE and Oman (UTC+4) do not use daylight saving time. So when New York falls back in November, the US open arrives one hour later on Gulf clocks, and in March it moves one hour earlier again.
The UK and Egypt change their clocks on different dates from the US, so for a few weeks a year the gap with New York shrinks by an hour. That is why London and Cairo see the open an hour early in March and at the end of October.
- US daylight time 2026: Sunday, March 8 to Sunday, November 1
- UK summer time 2026: Sunday, March 29 to Sunday, October 25
- Egypt summer time 2026: Friday, April 24 to Thursday, October 29
- US daylight time 2027 starts: Sunday, March 14
US stock market hours in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, London and Cairo
For Gulf traders the whole session falls in the evening, so Friday's session runs on Friday evening and after-hours spills into early Saturday. In Riyadh, pre-market opens at 11:00 a.m. in summer and noon in winter, and after-hours ends at 3:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m. Add one hour for Dubai.
Here is the regular session in local time. Summer is US daylight time, March 8 to November 1, 2026. Winter runs from November 1, 2026 to March 14, 2027.
- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain: 4:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. in summer, 5:30 p.m. to midnight in winter
- UAE and Oman: 5:30 p.m. to midnight in summer, 6:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. in winter
- London: 2:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. most of the year, 1:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. from March 9 to 27 and October 26 to 30, 2026
- Cairo: 4:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. most of the year, 3:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. from March 9 to April 23 and on October 30, 2026
Stock market holidays 2026: NYSE and Nasdaq
The NYSE and Nasdaq share one holiday calendar. In 2026 they close for 10 full days and close early, at 1:00 p.m. ET, on 2 more, when after-hours also ends early at 5:00 p.m. ET. Both early closes fall in US winter time, so 1:00 p.m. ET is 9:00 p.m. in Riyadh, 10:00 p.m. in Dubai and 6:00 p.m. in London.
Two days confuse people every year. On Columbus Day (Monday, October 12) and Veterans Day (Wednesday, November 11), stocks trade normally and only the US bond market is closed. The full 2026 list:
- Thursday, January 1: New Year's Day
- Monday, January 19: Martin Luther King Jr. Day
- Monday, February 16: Washington's Birthday (Presidents' Day)
- Friday, April 3: Good Friday
- Monday, May 25: Memorial Day
- Friday, June 19: Juneteenth
- Friday, July 3: Independence Day, observed because July 4 is a Saturday
- Monday, September 7: Labor Day
- Thursday, November 26: Thanksgiving Day
- Friday, November 27: early close at 1:00 p.m. ET
- Thursday, December 24: early close at 1:00 p.m. ET
- Friday, December 25: Christmas Day
When is the stock market most active, and when is it quiet?
Intraday volume tends to be heaviest at the open and the close and thinnest around lunchtime in New York. Each part of that shape calls for a different approach.
The day starts before the bell. Major reports such as the monthly jobs report and CPI come out at 8:30 a.m. ET and can gap the pre-market hard. Check the economic calendar each morning, then use this map of the session:
- 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. ET, the open: the most volume, the widest ranges and the fastest reversals
- 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. ET: the first trend of the day often settles and the opening range gets tested
- 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET, the lunch lull: thin volume and choppy price, where many breakouts fail
- 2:00 p.m. ET on Fed meeting days: the FOMC statement can jolt the whole market within minutes
- 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. ET, power hour: volume returns into the closing auction and the trend extends or reverses
Why are the first minutes after the open so risky?
At 9:30 the opening auction clears a whole night of orders in one print. Right after it, spreads are wide, overnight gaps are still being repriced, and old stop orders get hit in clusters. Indicators are weak too: session VWAP has only a few bars behind it, and moving averages lag any gap.
Here is a hypothetical. A stock closed yesterday at $100 and opens today at $103. In the first three minutes it jumps to $104, then slides to $102.40 before 9:45. A trader who chased at $103.90 with a stop at $103.20 is out with a loss before the opening range has even formed. A trader who waited for the first 15-minute candle to close knows the range, $102.40 to $104, and can plan a break or a reclaim with a clear stop.
Let the first candle close, mark the opening range, and check price against VWAP before you act. The VWAP trading guide covers that level, and day trading for beginners covers sizing so a bad open stays a small loss. Trading is risky at any hour, and the open is where it moves fastest.
How UpTickFlow handles the session
UpTickFlow is our own invite-only TradingView indicator, so read this as a description, not a neutral review. It is built for the regular session on liquid US stocks, ETFs and index futures, on 5-minute to 1-hour charts. It gives no new signals in the first 10 minutes after the open, and it skips the 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. ET lunch lull and the last 30 minutes.
Signals use closed bars only, each comes with an entry, stop and target drawn on the chart, and the indicator reads three higher timeframes automatically, an idea explained in multi-timeframe analysis. You can apply the same timing rules by hand for free: set your TradingView chart to your time zone, mark the opening range, and write down the hours you will not trade. If you would rather have the filtering done for you, see the pricing page.