Short answer
- The US stock market closes at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. Both the NYSE and Nasdaq run their regular session from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET.
- Trading also happens outside those hours: pre-market 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, with thinner volume and wider price spreads.
- The market is fully closed on weekends and on ten market holidays each year, and it closes early at 1:00 p.m. ET on a few half days, such as the day after Thanksgiving.
- The 4:00 p.m. close is a working mechanism, not just a time. It sets the official closing price for every stock, prices most mutual funds, and starts the one-day settlement clock on that day's trades.
- Your broker's hours can be narrower than the exchange's, and times never shift for daylight saving: 4:00 p.m. Eastern is always 4:00 p.m. in New York.
The closing bell is one of the most famous sounds in American finance, and the answer behind it fits in a single sentence. Yet almost everyone who asks “what time does the stock market close” has a second question hiding behind it: can I still place an order, what will my mutual fund price at, and what time is the close where I live? This article answers all of it, sourced from the exchanges and the SEC, so you can treat 4:00 p.m. Eastern as a reference point you actually understand. It is an explainer about how markets work, not financial advice.
The Regular Session: 4:00 p.m. ET, Monday to Friday
The two major US stock exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, trade their core equity sessions from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, excluding exchange holidays. Nasdaq publishes these hours directly on its stock market schedule, and NYSE Rule 1.1 defines the same 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET window as its core trading hours.
The session lasts six and a half hours. “Eastern Time” means New York time, and the hours never move when the clocks change. Whether the East Coast is on Eastern Standard Time or Eastern Daylight Time, the bell rings at 9:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. in New York. What shifts is the equivalent time on your clock somewhere else, a point we work through in detail below.
One clarification that trips up new investors: the “stock market” in this phrase means the exchanges where stocks trade. Futures on stock indexes, stock options, and foreign exchanges keep their own clocks, and those are covered later in this article.
Every Session at a Glance
The regular session is only part of the trading day. Both exchanges publish extended-hours sessions around it:
| Session | Hours (Eastern Time) | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-market (extended hours) | 4:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. ET | Trading before the opening bell |
| Regular session | 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET | The main trading day |
| After-hours (extended hours) | 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET | Trading after the closing bell |
Nasdaq gives exactly these windows on its official market schedule, and adds a warning worth repeating: extended markets carry risks, with higher volatility and less liquidity, so prices can move much more dramatically. NYSE’s equities page lays out the same structure for NYSE Arca (early 4:00 to 9:30 a.m., core 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., late 4:00 to 8:00 p.m.), alongside an overnight session from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. that is part of its extended-hours framework.
Two practical notes apply to the whole table. First, your broker’s window may be narrower than the exchange’s. Many retail brokers start pre-market access at 7:00 or 8:00 a.m. rather than 4:00 a.m., and some limit the types of orders you can place outside regular hours. The exchange publishes the schedule; your broker decides how much of it you can use. Second, extended-hours quotes are not the same quality as regular-hours quotes. With fewer buyers and sellers in the market, the gap between the best bid and the best ask widens, and a single large order can push a price far more than it would at 2:00 p.m.
What Actually Happens at 4:00 p.m.: The Closing Auction
At 4:00 p.m. the regular session does not simply fade out; it converges on a single event called the closing auction. This is the mechanism that sets the official closing price for every listed stock, and understanding it explains several things that confuse casual observers.
In the final minutes before the close, buy and sell interest for each stock is pooled and matched at a single price designed to execute the maximum number of shares. Traders use special order types for this: market-on-close orders, which accept whatever the closing price turns out to be, and limit-on-close orders, which accept the closing price only up to a limit they set. Under NYSE’s closing procedures (Rule 123C), these orders can be entered or cancelled without restriction until 3:50 p.m. ET; after that cutoff, they may only be entered to offset a published order imbalance, and the imbalance information is broadcast to the market so traders can see where the pressure is.
Why should a non-trader care? Three reasons. First, the closing price that prints at 4:00 p.m. is the number that appears on charts, in your brokerage app, and in the next morning’s newspaper. Second, a large share of each day’s trading volume concentrates in the closing auction, because funds that track indexes want to trade exactly at the closing price to match their benchmarks. Third, it explains why an order placed at 3:55 p.m. can behave differently from one placed at 2:00 p.m.: the cutoff window has narrowed, and the price you get may be set in the auction rather than in continuous trading.
A related nuance: not everything closes at 4:00 p.m. Nasdaq’s options markets (PHLX, NOM, ISE, GEMX, and BX Options) run ETF and broad-based index options until 4:15 p.m. ET; single-stock options close at 4:00 p.m. along with the stocks. So when someone says “the market closed,” traders in index products still had fifteen more minutes, and prices could still move on options-driven hedging into 4:15.
Why the Market Keeps These Hours at All
Trading could, in principle, run around the clock. Stock index futures nearly do (more on that below). The exchanges keep a bounded session for reasons that are mostly practical.
Liquidity concentrates when everyone shows up at once. A market works best when buyers and sellers meet. Compressing trading into a defined window concentrates orders, which tightens spreads and produces prices that reflect broad agreement rather than the mood of a few overnight traders. Splitting volume across 24 hours would thin each hour out, making prices less reliable for everyone.
Clearing and settlement need a cutoff. After the close, clearinghouses match every trade with its counterparty, and brokers reconcile accounts. The 4:00 p.m. line gives the plumbing of the market a clean end-of-day to process against. Under SEC rules in force since May 28, 2024, most US stock trades settle one business day after the trade date (T+1), and the settlement machinery works from the day’s closed book.
Funds and benchmarks need a daily price. Mutual funds price once a day off the closing prices (covered below), index providers strike their daily index values at the close, and options and futures settle against reference prices tied to the close. A market without a fixed close would have no agreed daily snapshot, and the entire fund and derivatives industry is built on that snapshot.
People and regulators need the market to sleep. A defined session gives exchanges a maintenance window, gives regulators a clean audit trail per trading day, and gives human participants, including the floor traders still active on the NYSE, predictable working hours. It is not nostalgia; a market that never closes still needs its pipes cleaned.
What 4:00 p.m. Eastern Means Where You Live
Because the exchanges quote everything in New York time, converting is simple arithmetic. The US spans four mainland time zones:
| Time zone | Market opens | Market closes |
|---|---|---|
| Eastern (New York) | 9:30 a.m. | 4:00 p.m. |
| Central (Chicago) | 8:30 a.m. | 3:00 p.m. |
| Mountain (Denver) | 7:30 a.m. | 2:00 p.m. |
| Pacific (Los Angeles) | 6:30 a.m. | 1:00 p.m. |
The common mistake is daylight saving time. The market’s hours are fixed in New York local time, not in a fixed offset from your city. New York shifts between EST (UTC-5) in winter and EDT (UTC-4) in summer, and so does the conversion. A reader in London, for example, faces two different situations in the same year: during the US summer, 4:00 p.m. New York time is 9:00 p.m. London time; during the US winter, it is 9:00 p.m. London time. There is also one genuinely tricky week each autumn, usually late October, when the UK has already ended daylight saving but the US has not yet, briefly shifting the gap by an hour. The rule that never changes: the bell rings at 4:00 p.m. in New York, and you convert from there.
Worked examples:
- A trader in Chicago wants to catch the closing auction. The MOC cutoff is 3:50 p.m. ET, which is 2:50 p.m. Central. The close prints at 3:00 p.m. Central.
- An investor in Los Angeles places a mutual fund order. The fund’s pricing cutoff is 4:00 p.m. ET, which is 1:00 p.m. Pacific. An order placed at 1:05 p.m. Pacific gets the next business day’s price.
- A reader in London in July watches earnings released “after the close.” That means news starts flowing at 9:00 p.m. London time, and after-hours trading runs 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.
Weekends, Holidays, and Half Days
The NYSE and Nasdaq are closed every Saturday and Sunday, with no regular trading on weekends. They also close fully for ten market holidays each year and close early on a few designated half days.
The 2026 calendar, published by NYSE Group (Intercontinental Exchange), is:
| Holiday | 2026 date | Market status |
|---|---|---|
| New Year’s Day | Thursday, January 1 | Closed |
| Martin Luther King, Jr. Day | Monday, January 19 | Closed |
| Washington’s Birthday (Presidents’ Day) | Monday, February 16 | Closed |
| Good Friday | Friday, April 3 | Closed |
| Memorial Day | Monday, May 25 | Closed |
| Juneteenth National Independence Day | Friday, June 19 | Closed |
| Independence Day (observed) | Friday, July 3 | Closed |
| Labor Day | Monday, September 7 | Closed |
| Thanksgiving Day | Thursday, November 26 | Closed |
| Christmas Day | Friday, December 25 | Closed |
| Day after Thanksgiving | Friday, November 27 | Early close, 1:00 p.m. ET |
| Christmas Eve | Thursday, December 24 | Early close, 1:00 p.m. ET |
On the two early-close days, the regular session runs 9:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. ET instead of 4:00 p.m., and the exchange’s late trading sessions close at 5:00 p.m. ET. The closing auction mechanics still apply, shifted earlier: cutoff times are measured from the scheduled close, so on a half day the 3:50 p.m. MOC cutoff becomes 12:50 p.m.
Three distinctions are worth keeping straight. First, market holidays are not the same as federal or bank holidays. Good Friday is not a federal holiday, but the stock market closes for it; Columbus Day and Veterans Day are federal holidays, but the stock market trades normally. Second, a holiday closure stops everything: no pre-market, no after-hours, no closing auction. Third, the calendar can change in exceptional circumstances, such as national days of mourning, which the exchanges announce as they happen.
After the Bell: Futures, Options, and Overnight Markets
A reader checking their phone at 10:00 p.m. may see stock futures moving while the stock market itself is closed. This is the source of a lot of confusion, so here is the clean version.
Stock index futures, such as the E-mini S&P 500 traded on CME Globex, are separate contracts that track indexes rather than individual stocks. They trade nearly around the clock: Sunday 6:00 p.m. through Friday 5:00 p.m. ET, with a daily maintenance break from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET. So when Asia trades overnight or news breaks at midnight in New York, futures react in real time while the NYSE and Nasdaq sit dark until 9:30 a.m. The futures price you see at 2:00 a.m. is a live contract price, not the price of any stock.
Options sit between the two. Nasdaq’s options markets close at 4:15 p.m. ET, fifteen minutes after stocks. And some brokerages and alternative trading systems offer overnight sessions on actual stocks, typically with very thin volume, which is why an overnight quote can look strange compared with the prior 4:00 p.m. close.
The practical takeaway: if a headline at 11:00 p.m. says “markets fell,” it usually means futures fell. The stocks themselves will reprice when the regular session opens at 9:30 a.m.
Currency markets run longer still: they trade nearly around the clock on weekdays, which is why exchange rates move while the stock exchanges are dark. How one of those rates is built — and why the rate on a screen is not always the rate you get — is set out in our explainer on the yen-to-dollar exchange rate.
What the 4:00 p.m. Close Means for Your Money
The close is not just when trading stops; it is the reference time for several things that touch ordinary investors.
Stock orders. An order placed during the regular session executes during the regular session. An order placed after 4:00 p.m. generally waits for the next trading day, unless you specifically enable extended-hours trading at your broker, in which case it may execute in the after-hours session at after-hours prices and spreads. On a Friday evening after the close, with no extended-hours access, a stock order simply sits until Monday at 9:30 a.m.
Mutual funds. Mutual funds do not trade intraday. Under the SEC’s forward-pricing rule (Rule 22c-1), a fund computes its net asset value, the per-share price, after the order is received, and most funds strike that NAV once a day as of the 4:00 p.m. ET close of the major exchanges. The rule creates a hard cutoff: an order received before the fund’s 4:00 p.m. pricing time gets that day’s price; an order received after it gets the next business day’s price. Many brokers impose their own earlier internal deadlines, so the fund company’s cutoff is the last word but not necessarily yours. This is also why the close matters even to investors who never trade a single stock: it is when your fund’s price is set.
Settlement. Since May 28, 2024, the standard US settlement cycle is T+1: a stock trade settles one business day after the trade date. Buy on Monday, and the shares and cash change hands on Tuesday (assuming no holiday). The 4:00 p.m. close defines which “day” a trade belongs to, which is why the cutoff matters for settlement as well as pricing. For context on how the wider economy connects to markets, see our explainer on what a recession is and how downturns are officially defined.
Benchmarks and headlines. Index values, the “market was up 1 percent today” figures, and the charts in your brokerage app are all struck from closing prices. Two investors comparing performance are comparing closes, whether they know it or not.
Note that not every product follows this script. Savings bonds, for example, accrue interest on their own schedule rather than being priced off the daily close (see how savings bonds work). The 4:00 p.m. machinery governs exchange-traded securities and the funds built on them.
Is the Schedule About to Change?
As of late 2026, the 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. regular session is intact, but the edges of the trading day are moving.
In February 2025, NYSE Arca became the first established US equity exchange to receive SEC approval to extend its trading hours, with a plan to stretch weekday trading to 22 hours a day. The exchange later amended its filing toward a 23-hour structure with a dedicated overnight session (its amended filing of May 12, 2026 describes the 23x5 operational framework). Nasdaq’s own move has now cleared the decisive hurdle: on April 10, 2026, the SEC approved Nasdaq’s proposal to move from 16 hours a day, five days a week, to 23 hours a day, five days a week. Both Nasdaq and NYSE Arca target a December 6, 2026 launch. The planned overnight session would run 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. ET (Sunday through Thursday nights), with an 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. maintenance pause. On paper, Nasdaq would consolidate to two sessions (a Night session from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. and a Day session from 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.), while NYSE Arca would keep a four-session framework; either way, the sessions table above remains the current schedule until these launches happen. A newly approved national exchange, 24X, is cleared to trade 23 hours a day.
None of this changes the regular session. What changes is the overnight: instead of futures being the only game in town at 2:00 a.m., actual stocks could trade on exchanges through the night. Expect the same caveats that apply to today’s extended hours, writ larger: thinner liquidity, wider spreads, and prices that can move sharply on small volume. If these launches go ahead, this article’s sessions table will need updating, and the exchange calendars remain the authoritative reference.
How to Check Whether the Market Is Open Today
When in doubt, check the exchange, not a search snippet. Nasdaq publishes its full holiday schedule on its market-activity page, and the NYSE Group calendar at nyse.com/markets/hours-calendars covers all NYSE markets. Your broker’s status page or app usually mirrors the exchange calendar, and most brokers flag half days in advance.
A quick decision tree: Is it Saturday or Sunday? Closed. Is it one of the ten holidays in the table above? Closed. Is it the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve (when they fall on weekdays)? Half day, closing at 1:00 p.m. ET. Otherwise, on a weekday, the regular session runs 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET.
Frequently Asked Questions
What time does the stock market close today?
On a regular weekday, 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time. On the two scheduled half days (the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, when they fall on weekdays), 1:00 p.m. ET. On weekends and market holidays, it does not open at all. Check the exchange holiday calendar for the current year rather than assuming.
What time does the stock market open?
9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, on non-holiday weekdays. Pre-market trading on the exchanges begins at 4:00 a.m. ET, though many brokers open their pre-market access later.
Is the stock market open on weekends?
No. The NYSE and Nasdaq are closed every Saturday and Sunday. No regular-session trading occurs, and there are no closing auctions. Stock index futures do trade on Sunday evenings starting at 6:00 p.m. ET.
What time does after-hours trading end?
On the exchanges, the after-hours session runs from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. ET. Your broker may close its after-hours window earlier, and overnight venues operate on their own schedules.
Does the market close at a different time during daylight saving?
No. The hours are fixed in New York local time: always 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in New York. Daylight saving changes the equivalent time in other cities, not the market’s hours.
What is a half day in the stock market?
A scheduled session that closes early at 1:00 p.m. ET instead of 4:00 p.m. In 2026 these are Friday, November 27 (the day after Thanksgiving) and Thursday, December 24 (Christmas Eve). The closing auction and order cutoffs shift earlier by the same three hours.
Why do stock prices still move after 4:00 p.m.?
Three separate things keep moving: after-hours stock trading (4:00 to 8:00 p.m. ET), options on ETFs and broad-based indexes (until 4:15 p.m. ET on Nasdaq’s options markets; single-stock options end at 4:00 p.m.), and stock index futures (nearly around the clock). Company earnings are also typically released after the close, which is why after-hours prices react to news the regular session never saw.
Can I buy stocks when the market is closed?
You can place an order, but it will not execute in the regular session until the next trading day opens. Some brokers offer extended-hours or overnight execution with different risks, including wider spreads and lower liquidity. Mutual fund orders placed after the 4:00 p.m. pricing cutoff receive the next business day’s price.
Is the stock market open on Good Friday? On Christmas Eve?
Good Friday is a full market holiday: the NYSE and Nasdaq are closed all day, even though it is not a federal holiday. Christmas Eve is a half day when it falls on a weekday (1:00 p.m. ET close in 2026); when Christmas Eve falls on a weekend, the schedule follows the exchange’s published calendar.
What time does the stock market close in California? In the UK?
At 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time in California (4:00 p.m. ET minus three hours). In the UK, the close is at 9:00 p.m. London time during the US summer (EDT) and 9:00 p.m. during the US winter (EST), because the two regions change their clocks on different dates.
Conclusion
The stock market closes at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, and that single time anchors the closing auction, mutual fund pricing, settlement, and the daily numbers everyone quotes. Around it sits a wider trading day, from 4:00 a.m. pre-market to 8:00 p.m. after-hours, plus holidays, half days, and a futures market that barely sleeps. Know which clock you are reading, convert from New York time rather than memorizing offsets, and the schedule stops being a trivia question and starts being a tool.
This article explains how markets work; it is not financial advice.
Keep reading: What Is a Recession? The Official Definition Explained
Keep reading: What Is a Savings Bond? Series EE and Series I Explained
Sources & references
- Nasdaq, "Trading Hours for the Nasdaq Stock Markets" and "U.S. Stock Market Holiday Schedule" (2026 calendar)
- NYSE, "Extended Hours Trading" (session structure; February 2025 SEC approval of NYSE Arca 22-hour extension; amended 23-hour filing; targeted 2026 launch)
- Intercontinental Exchange, "NYSE Group Announces 2026, 2027 and 2028 Holiday and Early Closings Calendar" (press release, Dec 23, 2025; full 2026 holiday list; early closes at 1:00 p.m. ET on Nov 27 and Dec 24, 2026)
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, "Amendments to Rules Governing Pricing of Mutual Fund Shares" (Rule 22c-1 forward pricing; most funds calculate NAV as of the 4:00 p.m. ET exchange close; pre/post cutoff pricing)
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, "Shortening the Securities Transaction Settlement Cycle" (T+1 standard settlement effective May 28, 2024)
- Federal Register, NYSE Rule 123C closing procedures amendment (MOC/LOC order entry and cancellation cutoff at 3:50 p.m. ET; mandatory imbalance publications; adjusted times on early-close days)
- Federal Register, Nasdaq 23/5 trading proposal notice (proposal to move from 16 to 23 hours per day, five days a week; 24X National Exchange approved Nov 27, 2024 for 23-hour trading)
- CME Group, E-mini S&P 500 contract specifications (CME Globex hours Sunday 6:00 p.m. to Friday 5:00 p.m. ET; daily maintenance period 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET)
- AARP, "Stock Market Holidays 2026" (readable 2026 holiday list; NYSE and Nasdaq observe the same schedule)
