Globex hours, RTH and ETH

Futures trade almost around the clock, and that is both the attraction and the problem. A market that is open 23 hours a day is not equally liquid for 23 hours, and the same contract behaves like three different markets depending on the time. Knowing the schedule tells you when your stop will fill cleanly and when it will not.

The Globex week

For CME Group's major contracts the electronic session runs Sunday evening to Friday afternoon, US Eastern Time, with a short daily break:

Exchanges publish these in Central Time; subtract an hour from the table above if your broker does the same. The 5:00 pm break is when the daily settlement is finalized, margin is computed, and the "trade date" rolls over: a trade at 6:01 pm Monday belongs to Tuesday's session.

Hours change. Exchanges revise them occasionally and holidays alter them (Lesson 3). Verify with the exchange's product page, not with memory.

RTH versus ETH

Regular trading hours (RTH) are the hours when the underlying cash market is open. For the index contracts that is the US stock market, 9:30 am to 4:00 pm ET. For crude it is the historical pit session, 9:00 am to 2:30 pm ET. For gold, roughly 8:20 am to 1:30 pm ET. Treasuries are less clear-cut because the cash bond market is itself nearly continuous; most people use 8:20 am to 3:00 pm ET.

Extended trading hours (ETH) are everything else, and in practice they split into three distinct periods for the index contracts:

The chart does not show you which period you are in unless you set it to. Most platforms let you display RTH-only or full-session (ETH) charts and let you shade the sessions. Do both. Levels from the overnight session, especially the overnight high and low, are widely watched and worth marking on your RTH chart.

Why liquidity varies so much

Liquidity follows the people. During RTH the index futures are being arbitraged against 500 stocks and thousands of ETFs by firms whose entire job is to keep the spread at one tick. Overnight, those stocks are closed, the arbitrage is against thinner instruments, and many participants simply go home. The book gets thinner, market orders move price further, and stops fill worse.

Illustrative depth at the best bid and offer on ES:

These are orders of magnitude, not measurements, and micros are thinner than full-size at every hour. The point is that a stop that reliably loses one tick to slippage at 10:00 am can lose five at 11:00 pm on the same contract.

Key idea: Futures are open nearly 23 hours a day but only liquid for a fraction of it. Know which session you are in, set charts to show it, and expect wider spreads and worse fills outside RTH.

Which session should you trade?

A beginner should trade the session where fills are cleanest and where a stop actually protects them, which is RTH, and specifically not the first two minutes of it. The overnight session is not off-limits, but it requires smaller size, wider stops in ticks and lower expectations of fill quality. Trading the Asian session on a micro contract with a two-tick stop is a way of paying the spread for practice.

Many futures traders pick a fixed window, for example 9:30 am to 11:30 am ET, and trade nothing else. That is not a rule so much as a recognition that the volume, and therefore the setups, cluster there.

Try it: On your platform, set up two charts of the same contract: one RTH-only and one full-session. Mark the overnight high and low on the RTH chart for the last five days. Then note the time of day of your last ten trades, if you have any, and which session each fell in.

Recap

• Globex runs Sunday 6:00 pm to Friday 5:00 pm ET with a daily 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm break; equity indices also halt 4:15 pm to 4:30 pm.
• RTH is when the cash market is open; ETH is everything else, split into Asian, European and post-close periods.
• Liquidity follows the arbitrageurs, so RTH has the deepest book and tightest spreads; overnight is thinner, especially for micros.
• Set charts to show sessions; mark the overnight high and low.
• Beginners should trade RTH, with smaller size and wider stops if they trade overnight at all.