Stock market hours, which exchanges are open right now?

The market never sleeps

Global equity trading runs as a relay around the clock. The Asia-Pacific session opens first, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Sydney, then hands over to Europe as London, Frankfurt and Paris come online. By the time New York rings its opening bell, London is well into its afternoon, and the two overlap for a few hours that carry much of the day's cross-Atlantic volume. When New York closes, it's already tomorrow in Sydney and the cycle begins again.

That hand-off is why the board above almost always shows something open, and why the exact overlaps matter if you trade across regions. The London–New York overlap in particular is the busiest window of the day; the thin gaps, after New York closes but before Tokyo opens, are when liquidity is lowest. Each exchange page breaks its hours down into London and New York time so you can line the sessions up.

The board now checks each exchange's national holiday calendar before calling it open, which is the difference between a reference and a trap: the schedule alone says the New York Stock Exchange trades on the fourth Thursday of November, and it does not. What is still not modelled is the half day — Christmas Eve closes the NYSE at one in the afternoon, and the board draws the full session. Unscheduled halts are nobody's calendar. Treat this as a fast, holiday-aware time reference rather than an official market calendar.