U.S. Stock Market Hours 2026: Premarket, Regular, After-Hours, and the Planned Overnight Session

U.S. stocks trade in named sessions, not one 24-hour tape. Regular hours are still 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET. Early trading is an exchange split, not a broker clock: some venues open at 4:00 a.m., others at 7:00 a.m. An overnight session (9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.) is planned for December 6, 2026, not live. Subject to remaining SEC, SIP, and DTCC readiness.

This page maps official venue clocks. It is not a broker-hours table, not a live-scanner pitch, and not financial advice. Session times and launch dates come from exchange documents and can change.

The 2026 session map (ET)

What is live today vs planned

Read the first screen as two clocks: what prints now, and what NYSE Arca and Nasdaq have filed for later this year.

NYSE Arca’s plan is a 23-hour trading day (9:00 p.m. through 8:00 p.m. the next evening) with that one-hour pause. That is not 24/7, and it is not running yet.

Early session is not one liquidity pool

4:00 a.m. ET is not “when the U.S. market opens.” It is when some equity venues begin continuous early trading. Other listed venues start continuous early trading at 7:00 a.m. NYSE Tape A (the NYSE primary listing market) has no continuous early session: orders queue from 6:30 a.m. into the 9:30 a.m. opening auction.

Your broker can open later than either of those, and can route you to one venue rather than all of them. Treat 4:00 a.m. as an exchange Early session, not as a promise that your ticket will fill.

TODO:VERIFY Nasdaq NTX and Nasdaq PSX hours on their own trader notices before citing those two venues. This table does not invent them.

Core vs Late: what after hours actually is

The official closing price follows the Core Closing Auction at 4:00 p.m. ET. Late-session prints after 4:00 p.m. (on Arca, through 8:00 p.m.) are extended-hours trades. They do not replace that official close.

Off-core prints typically carry sale condition T (not last-sale eligible). A 7:12 p.m. print can be the last thing you see on a chart and still not be the official close you will see in next-day files, index calculations, or many mark-to-market processes.

Late hours are thinner than Core. Spreads widen. A stop that would have been routine at 11:00 a.m. can gap through a 5:40 p.m. book. Size for that, or do not use the session.

Overnight session (planned December 6, 2026)

NYSE Arca’s Extended Hours FAQ (updated August 2026) names an Overnight Session from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. ET, targeted for December 6, 2026. Nasdaq’s ETA 2026-46 (dated August 17, 2026) points at the same overnight window and still describes remaining work with regulators. Neither document makes overnight live today.

• No overnight opening auction. Continuous overnight trading is the design; do not wait for a 9:00 p.m. print that “opens” the name the way 9:30 a.m. does.
• Orders accepted from 8:59 p.m. ET, per the Arca FAQ.
• Trade-date flip: fills from 9:00 p.m. through midnight take the next calendar trade date. A Tuesday 9:07 p.m. print is not Tuesday’s tape in the DTCC sense.
• Overnight LULD bands in the FAQ are static 20% from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. TODO:VERIFY after launch. Do not trade as if that band is already in force.
• Cboe has a related 23x5 filing for EDGX (notice C2026063004). That is a venue plan, not a second live overnight tape.

Until December 6 actually prints, treat overnight as a filing, not as a session you can click into.

Options hours are a different clock

Do not mix equity tape hours with options hours. They are different products, different books, and different go-live calendars.

Cboe C1 equity-options Global Trading Hours did not go live on August 17, 2026. Cboe notice C2026081001 struck that date. The start is TBA. Do not write as if single-stock options already trade in that GTH window.

What is live on Cboe is index-options GTH for named products including SPX, VIX, XSP, and RUT, 8:15 p.m. to 9:25 a.m. ET. See Cboe U.S. options hours and Cboe hours. That board is not the equity overnight tape, and it is not C1 equity-options GTH.

TODO:VERIFY whether MGTN and MRUT currently appear on the live C1 GTH board before naming them. This page does not.

When C1 equity-options GTH/Curb does launch, the notices on file have said those sessions do not take market or stop/stop-limit orders. Confirm the order-type list on the then-current Cboe notice. Do not assume a stop that works in RTH will work in GTH.

Worked example: gap percent, then share count

Two separate calculations. A 5% gap is not 5% account risk.

Gap %. (P_new − P_ref) / P_ref × 100. Illustration only: prior Core close $50.00, overnight or early print $52.50 → 5.00%. Run it in the percentage-change calculator. Treat the inputs as a stock price in dollars, not as a coin.

Share count. Shares = floor((Account × Risk %) / |P_entry − P_stop|). Illustration only: $25,000 account, 1% risk = $250, entry $52.50, stop $51.00 → $1.50 per share. Shares = floor(250 / 1.50) = 166. Notional = 166 × $52.50 = $8,715. Planned loss if the stop fills at $51.00 = $249.

Use the risk calculator the same way. The tool is the site’s existing position-size math. For stocks, treat the output as shares, and round down. Do not round up into a 167th share you did not size. Stops are not a fill guarantee in thin Early or (later) Overnight prints.

Defined-risk stock examples can use the stop-loss / take-profit calculator. All three tools are free, browser-only, and show the formula. No account. More on the tools index. Stock courses live at /courses/stocks.

The U.S. stock scanner is Coming soon. It is not a live product on this site today, and this page does not sell it.

What this page is not

• Not a broker-hours cheat sheet. Broker windows are often narrower than the venue clocks above.
• Not a claim that U.S. stocks already trade overnight or 24/7.
• Not a claim that Cboe C1 equity-options GTH launched on August 17, 2026. It did not.
• Not a scanner review, not a 24/7 pitch, and not personalized advice.

FAQ

Are U.S. stocks 24 hours yet? No. NYSE Arca’s plan is 23 hours (9:00 p.m. through 8:00 p.m.) with a one-hour pause, targeted for December 6, 2026, still subject to remaining SEC, SIP, and DTCC readiness. Nasdaq ETA 2026-46 still describes regulatory work. TODO:VERIFY any date slip against the then-current FAQ.

Is 4:00 a.m. ET the time my broker lets me trade? Not necessarily. 4:00 a.m. is the Early session on NYSE Arca, Nasdaq, Cboe BZX, and Cboe EDGX. Other listed venues start continuous early trading at 7:00 a.m. NYSE Tape A has no continuous early session. Broker access is often narrower than all of that.

Do overnight or after-hours prints set the official close? No. The official closing price follows the Core Closing Auction at 4:00 p.m. Off-core prints typically use sale condition T and are not last-sale eligible.

If options trade before 9:30, can I rest a stop on a single-stock call in GTH? Cboe C1 equity-options GTH is not live; notice C2026081001 made the August 17 start TBA. Live index-options GTH (SPX, VIX, XSP, RUT) is a different clock. When C1 equity GTH/Curb does launch, the notices on file have excluded market and stop/stop-limit orders. Confirm on the then-current Cboe notice.

Should I size a 5% overnight gap the same as a 5% Core move? Same formula, worse fill assumptions. Gap percent is not account risk. Floor the share count. Thin books can trade through a stop.

Not financial advice. Trading stocks and options can result in loss of capital. Session times and launch dates are from exchange documents as of August 25, 2026 and can change. Unknowns are marked TODO:VERIFY.