Stock Market Hours for the World's Major Exchanges

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Current Values

The London Stock Exchange opens at 8:00 a.m. UK time, which is 2:00 a.m. Central Time (3:00 a.m. Eastern) for most of the year. It closes at 4:30 p.m. London time, or 10:30 a.m. Central and 11:30 a.m. Eastern. For a few weeks each spring and fall, daylight saving time narrows the gap by an hour: London then opens at 3:00 a.m. Central (4:00 a.m. Eastern) and closes at 11:30 a.m. Central (12:30 p.m. Eastern). The same mechanism explains most of the confusion about when markets open around the world.

How to Read the Exchange Hours Table

Each row gives an exchange’s regular session in local time, the city whose clock it follows, and that city’s current offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The UTC hours column converts the session to one common clock using today’s daylight-saving offsets. To compare exchanges, use that column. Local hours stay the same all year, but the UTC column moves when a region changes its clocks.

The Lunch break column lists exchanges that pause trading midday. In the current list, these are Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. A morning and an afternoon session sit inside the hours shown. The Status column shows whether each regular session is open right now. The All, Open now and Closed filters sort the 18 rows on that basis, and the CSV option exports them. The clocks above the table give the current time in UTC, New York, London and Tokyo.

The schedule covers regular sessions only. Pre-market and after-hours trading, half days and holiday closures follow separate exchange calendars.

Converting Exchange Hours to Your Time Zone

Any conversion takes two steps:

1. UTC time = local exchange time − exchange’s UTC offset
2. Your time = UTC time + your UTC offset

Hypothetical example, U.S. winter: London opens at 8:00 with an offset of +0, so the open is 08:00 UTC. U.S. Central Standard Time is UTC−6, so 08:00 − 6 = 2:00 a.m. Central. Tokyo opens at 9:00 with an offset of +9, which gives 00:00 UTC. In Eastern Standard Time (UTC−5), that is 7:00 p.m. the previous evening.

The date matters as much as the hour. Asian and Australian sessions open on the evening of the prior day in the Americas, so Monday’s Tokyo open happens on Sunday night in New York.

Why the Time Differences Change During the Year

Exchanges keep fixed local hours. The offsets between cities change because regions start and end daylight saving time on different dates, or skip it entirely:

• United States and Canada: clocks move forward on the second Sunday in March and back on the first Sunday in November.
• United Kingdom and the European Union: clocks change on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October.
• Sydney: clocks move forward on the first Sunday in October and back on the first Sunday in April, which runs opposite to the Northern Hemisphere.
• No daylight saving: Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Brazil.

These rules create the London exception. Between the U.S. change in March and the U.K. change two to three weeks later, New York is only four hours behind London, and the same gap appears for about a week between late October and early November.

Sydney moves the most against U.S. time. Its UTC offset rises as U.S. offsets fall, so the ASX open shifts by two hours over the year relative to New York.

London, Continental Europe and the New York Overlap

Euronext Paris, Deutsche Börse Xetra and SIX Swiss Exchange all open at the same moment, trading from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Central European Time. That is 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. London time, because the continent runs one hour ahead of the U.K. and both change clocks on the same dates.

London has no lunch break, though trading pauses for a brief midday auction at noon.

The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq trade from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday, and the Toronto Stock Exchange keeps the same hours. Mexico’s BMV sits in the Central time zone but generally aligns its session with New York. The London close at 11:30 a.m. Eastern gives a two-hour overlap with the U.S. open for most of the year, and about three hours during the mismatched daylight-saving weeks.

When Asian and Pacific Markets Open in U.S. Time

The Asia-Pacific day starts first. For a Monday session, these are the openings in U.S. Eastern Time on Sunday evening during U.S. standard time (add one hour during U.S. daylight time, except for Sydney):

• Australian Securities Exchange: 10:00 a.m. Sydney, which is 6:00 p.m. ET in the U.S. winter and 8:00 p.m. ET in the U.S. summer. Among the exchanges listed, it opens first each week.
• Tokyo and Korea Exchange: 9:00 a.m. local, 7:00 p.m. ET.
• Singapore Exchange: 9:00 a.m. local, 8:00 p.m. ET.
• Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong: 9:30 a.m. local, 8:30 p.m. ET.
• National Stock Exchange of India: 9:15 a.m. local, 10:45 p.m. ET.

Asia spans many time zones, but its major exchanges cluster their hours so sessions overlap. Tokyo’s close at 3:30 p.m. local falls at 1:30 a.m. ET in winter, and Shanghai closes for an extended Lunar New Year holiday.

South America, Africa and the Middle East

B3 in São Paulo is South America’s largest exchange. Brazil does not use daylight saving time, so its lead over New York changes from two hours in the U.S. winter to one hour in the summer, keeping B3’s session close to U.S. hours.

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Africa’s largest, trades from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. South African time with no lunch break, which is 2:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. ET in winter.

The Saudi Exchange (Tadawul) follows a different week: it trades Sunday through Thursday, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Riyadh time. Its Sunday session runs while Western markets are shut.

What the Regular Session Leaves Out

Holidays follow local calendars. The NYSE closes on July 4, Singapore closes for Lunar New Year, and U.S. exchanges close early (1:00 p.m. ET) on certain days around holidays.

Extended-hours trading in the U.S. runs before 9:30 a.m. and after 4:00 p.m. through brokers. These sessions usually have fewer participants and wider spreads. An order entered while the market is closed is generally queued for the next open unless you mark it for extended hours.

Circuit breakers can halt trading during a session. In the U.S., a 7% (Level 1) or 13% (Level 2) drop in the S&P 500 from the prior close before 3:25 p.m. ET pauses trading for 15 minutes, and a 20% drop (Level 3) ends trading for the day.

Schedule changes happen occasionally. Tokyo, for example, extended its afternoon session to the current 3:30 p.m. close in 2024.

Historical Data

Regular sessions only; exchange holidays and pre/post-market sessions are not shown. UTC hours reflect current daylight-saving offsets.

The Bottom Line

U.S. traders who follow overseas markets need to watch daylight saving dates, since exchanges keep fixed local hours while the gaps between cities shift in spring and fall. The UTC column gives the cleanest way to compare sessions side by side. Holidays, half days and extended hours fall outside the regular schedule, so check each exchange's own calendar before planning trades around a foreign open or close.