Quarterly cycle
March, June, September, December for equity index products. Other products roll monthly, which catches people moving between them.
H, M, U, ZReference
Futures trade nearly around the clock. That is the problem.
Equity index futures run almost twenty-three hours a day, five days a week. Which sounds like freedom until a strategy fires at 2am into a book a tenth as deep as the one it was tested on. The hours matter less as a schedule than as a map of when execution is good and when it is not.
The session, in plain terms
CME Globex equity index futures — ES, NQ, YM, RTY and their micros — open Sunday evening and run through to Friday afternoon, with a short maintenance halt every weekday evening.
In US Eastern time that is roughly 6:00 p.m. Sunday to 5:00 p.m. Friday, with the tape stopping between 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday. In Central time, which is what CME quotes in, the same thing is 5:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. with a 4:00–5:00 p.m. halt.
The exchange is the authority, not this page. Products differ — energies, metals and agriculturals all have their own schedules — and holiday weeks change everything. Check the CME product calendar for the contract you actually trade before you rely on a time.
Sunday openAround 6:00 p.m. ET. Thin, and the first hour frequently sets a level nobody defends later.Thin
Daily haltRoughly 5:00–6:00 p.m. ET, Monday to Thursday. Positions carry; new orders cannot go in.Closed
Regular hours9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. ET. Deepest book, tightest spreads, most of the day's volume.Deep
Friday closeAround 5:00 p.m. ET. No Sunday-style reopen until the following evening.Weekend
Other products keep different hours. Confirm yours with the exchange or your broker.
The three sessions people actually mean
"Asia session" and "London session" are not exchange terms — futures trade continuously through all of them. They are shorthand for which region's cash markets are open, and therefore where the volume is coming from.
They matter because liquidity follows them. The same order that is invisible at 10 a.m. Eastern can move through several price levels at 3 a.m., and a stop that would have slipped a tick in the afternoon can slip four overnight.
- Asia
- Roughly 6:00 p.m. – 3:00 a.m. ET. Thinnest of the three. Ranges are typically narrower and moves are easier to reverse, which flatters breakout strategies in testing and punishes them live.
- London
- Roughly 3:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m. ET. Liquidity improves markedly. A good deal of the day's directional move is often set here before the US wakes up.
- New York
- 9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. ET for the cash equity session. Deepest book, tightest spreads, and the hour after the open is the single most active period of the day.
- The overlap
- 8:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. ET, when London and New York are both live. Highest volume of the day and where most intraday strategies are designed to operate.
Why an automated strategy needs to know this
A webhook does not know what time it is, and it will place an order at 3 a.m. with exactly the confidence it had at 10 a.m.
Slippage is a schedule, not a constant. The book is materially thinner overnight, so the same strategy tested on regular-hours data will fill worse when it fires in the Asia session — and a backtest that applies one flat slippage figure to every hour has quietly overstated the edge. See slippage in futures trading.
The halt is not a gap. If your strategy relies on a stop, that stop is not working during the maintenance window. Nothing fills, and price can reopen somewhere else.
Session boundaries are where daily P&L resets. If you are trading a funded account, the firm's definition of a trading day may not match the exchange's, and that difference decides which side of a daily limit a late trade lands on. Check the rulebook rather than assuming.
If a strategy should not trade certain hours, the reliable fix is at the signal source — a time filter in the strategy itself — rather than hoping to be awake to stop it.
Rollover, the other date that matters
Equity index futures expire quarterly — March, June, September and December — and volume migrates to the next contract about a week before expiry, on the Thursday preceding the third Friday.
For a few days both contracts trade, and the one with the volume is not the one with the nearest expiry. An automated strategy pointed at a specific contract month rather than the front month will, on a predictable schedule, start trading the illiquid one.
This is the failure that looks like a broken strategy and is actually a calendar. Symbol resolution that follows the front month — rather than a hard-coded contract id — is what prevents it, and it is one of the genuinely fiddly parts of building your own execution layer. See the Tradovate API page for why.
Volume moves first
Liquidity migrates roughly a week before expiry. The front month by volume and the front month by date are briefly different contracts.
Follow the volumeA hard-coded symbol expires
Anything pinned to a specific contract month is a bug with a date on it. Resolution has to follow the roll.
Front month, not fixed monthWhat to check for your own contract
This page covers equity index futures because that is what most people mean. Yours may differ, and the answer is always in the same two places.
The exchange product page gives the authoritative session times, the holiday calendar and the expiry schedule. Your broker may narrow those further — some restrict overnight access, and prop firms frequently impose their own windows on top.
For an automated setup the practical checklist is short: when does the product trade, when is the daily halt, when does it roll, and does your firm impose a window narrower than the exchange's. All four are answerable in a few minutes and all four will otherwise be discovered by a fill you did not want.
Common questions
What are futures trading hours?
CME Globex equity index futures trade from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon — roughly 6:00 p.m. ET Sunday to 5:00 p.m. ET Friday — with a maintenance halt of about an hour each weekday evening. Other products keep different schedules, so confirm yours with the exchange.
Are futures open 24 hours?
Close to it, but not quite. Equity index futures run nearly twenty-three hours a day on weekdays, pausing for a short daily maintenance halt, and they are closed from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening.
What time does the Asia session start for futures?
Around 6:00 p.m. ET, running to roughly 3:00 a.m. ET. It is not an exchange session — futures trade continuously — but it is when Asian cash markets are open, and it is the thinnest part of the futures day.
What are regular trading hours for futures?
For equity index futures, 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET, matching the US cash equity session. That window carries the deepest book, the tightest spreads and most of the day's volume.
Why does the futures market close for an hour each day?
It is a maintenance window for the exchange's systems. Positions carry through it, but no new orders can be placed and stops are not working — which matters if your strategy assumes a stop is always live.
When do futures contracts roll over?
Equity index futures expire quarterly in March, June, September and December, and volume migrates to the next contract roughly a week before expiry. During that window the most liquid contract is not the nearest-dated one, which is why symbol resolution should follow the front month rather than a fixed month.
Start on a simulated account.
Connect a sim or evaluation account and run the whole product against it before you point anything at live money. Nothing about the setup changes when you do.